Taking chances

"...I stared the blog this way?"

Creativity. It's a quality all writers would like to have. Fiction writers want to craft a storyline, character or world that is different than anything anyone ever wrote before. Non-fiction writers aren't looking for new things (hopefully), but they still want to be the first to give a creative point of view on real people and events, to make the audience think in a way that they have not before.

But, sometimes, you have to take chances in creativity. You need to do something so out of the ordinary, that it may seem strange at first, something not everyone is going to get at first, or at all.

E. E. Cummings wrote poetry where the text itself showed you what he was expressing, with a long moment of silence, or making a word t a k e t o o l o n g.

The paragraph above probably gave some readers a headache. Others immediately picked up on the message. But Cummings' style has rarely been correctly imitated (and I don't think I could imitate it either). It was a risky way to show his creativity, but it paid off. Sixty years after his passing, high schools and colleges still use his poems in English classes.

Creativity and risk-taking is not limited to our primary art form, either. Pink Floyd is considered one of the top prog rock (or art rock) bands, and The Wall is a testament to their creativity. They were not settling for usually top 40 pop fare. But one of their most creative ideas is not found during any of their songs.

At the beginning of the album...er, compact disk or whatever now...before there is a single note, there is a voice saying "...where we came in?" It's faint, and if a listener hears it, it almost sound like a stray voice in the studio made it onto the recording. But, if somebody listens all the way to the end of The Wall, after the last song, the same voice says "Isn't this where..."

"Isn't this where we came in", broken up at the beginning and end of the album was a sort of pre-internet Easter Egg, but it also gave this idea of The Wall repeating itself and going on from generation to generation.

It was probably missed by many listeners, and other listeners may have never understood it. It was risky creativity.

It's not for everybody. But no writer should be ashamed or afraid of taking artistic risks. There is some pattern or words or text, some new way to use a book cover, some undiscovered order of storytelling, yet to be discovered. Maybe you're not the person who is going to find it

but

maybe

you

are.

Next week: What is your playoff?

"Now do you understand why..."