Thomas Sullivan

I remember overhearing my mother tell someone how as a boy I used to set up jigsaw puzzles in different rooms.  And it’s funny, but as an adult I never thought about myself doing this until she said that.  The thing that made it bizarre if not downright dysfunctional in a personality sense was that the loose pieces and the placed pieces of each puzzle were never in the same room.  The unplaced pieces of, say, a western scene around a cowboy campfire would be in a room where the picture from a Disney film like “Fantasia” was partly put together.  There might be four puzzles in-process like that.  With laughter in her voice my mother told this person that you always knew I was onto something when I suddenly went into one room, picked up a piece and carried it into another room.

Whatever possessed me — and I use the word possessed apprehensively — to begin doing this, the thing that strikes me now is the fact that finding answers that fit wasn’t something I did just standing over a problem.  It was something that occurred mostly over time and from a distance.  So, obviously the problem(s) were carried around in my head, and obviously the search for answers was ongoing, and perhaps less obviously whatever else I was doing at any given moment might trigger an inspiration or a revelation.  And now (at last he’s getting to the point, folks) I realize it’s the same thing with creating books and short stories.  They get solved (written) over time and from a distance.

Tell me, please, do you solve problems this way?  It seems evident that everyone does to some extent.  But to what extent?  How deliberately?  Is it a trainable resource in human creativity or just another blind alley in my idiosyncratic nature? 

I guess I’ve tried before to pin it down as a worthwhile and useful strategy for writers, i.e., that you should always define the next problem before you walk away from a creative session, because then solutions may occur to you in the interim.  In fact they almost certainly will be suggested by whatever you experience as you go about doing other things.  The suggestions will come to you as associations and metaphors.  Or maybe the terms connections and similarities work better for you.  That flow of suggestion is a big part of who you are, writer or not – creative person or not.

Well…at least the associations part is.  All people put life’s puzzles together over time by seeing the associations.  And they do it walking from room to room in their lives, noticing things that might fit insights and answers to whatever questions are nagging them.  Unless the TV is on.  (That’s only a metaphor for distraction, ‘cause in reality even the TV can suggest associations.)  What I mean is that the TV sort of appeals to the passive/lazy part of all of us.  It’s a stand-in for imagination and active thought.  If that’s your default activity whenever you chill out, pick a good channel, because that may constitute the quality of your life.  I know it’s scary to turn the TV off.  Suddenly we are in a room again and the walls rush toward us and the silence feels thick and terminal.  If we are with someone, what do we talk about?  God help us if we give our brains center stage and the spotlight fades to black!  There is always that danger.  But then, if that’s who you are – if you think that the last words to the national anthem are “…start your engines” – you can always turn the TV back on and pop a beer.  On the other hand, you might turn out to have those whatchamacallit’s…inner resources.  You might turn out to have them in spades – deep thought, wit, wisdom, imagination.  Dial the TV and other passive distractions down, and you dial the nagging problems up along with your motivation to solve them.  Do something that draws energy out of yourself, or interact with whatever or whoever inspires you, and you’ll feel your circuits come to life. 

Okay.  Sorry for the rant.  I’m just bitter about all the years I’ve wasted in the company of uninspiring things, narrowness and blocked communication.  My choice, mea culpa.  But then, I do have one helluva lot of rooms in my life.  It’s a burning regret and kind of an irony that I never found someone to share them with, and yet I think everyone has some rooms like that – maybe the innermost rooms.  I’m good at sharing innermost rooms, but I suck at crowded rooms where you have to live appearances rather than truths.  Appearances just smother me, and in general I have to believe they are antithetical to a creative life.

Anyway, I was saying that all people put life’s puzzles together with associations.  But not all people put together those metaphors to express them that I mentioned.  Writers do that.  People with poetry inside them do that.  Metaphors too are apt to dawn slowly on a person who carries the need to communicate with flair and imagination from room to room. 

It strikes me that metaphors are also more inspiration-sensitive than simple communication.  Expressing oneself in language that jangles and pulses with imagery is a whole other universe.  It can convey multiple levels of information and connect the dots between insights.  It can do this in a style that is itself colorful and entertaining, as opposed to the mundane communication of literal facts.  But this requires a willingness to go with the flow and sometimes a suspension of disbelief.  When you try to express yourself with flair to someone who clings narrowly to literal communication, you can quickly be snuffed out.  You feel you are talking to a blank wall, unable to engage them with insight, depth and emotional coloring.  Metaphorical and image-laden language is more challenging to use, but when it works, there’s nothing like it.  You want to connect with it always, to live life in the Technicolor it provides in a black-and-white world.

I’d like to believe it can be acquired.  And you can make it real.  Imagine a bed of roses.  Have you ever actually seen a bed of roses?  Why don’t you make one, like the picture at the start of this article?  Presto…done!  The metaphor is no longer just a metaphor but a fact.  You are living your imagination; you have given an ideal permanence. 

The truth is probably that some people just think metaphorically, while most do not but recognize and respond to what they perceive as witty or poetic or wise.  The problem for the inventor of metaphors — the writer, in this case — is to not overreach.  Hence, coming up with optimal expression is just like any other problem — any other jigsaw puzzle — that can benefit from being carried from room to room while life suggests possibilities and puts things into perspective.  I’m not saying that every word you write/utter should reverberate through marble halls.  On the contrary, clarity is the first mandate of communication.  But clarity is not confined to simplicity.  Unrelenting simplicity can be both boring and shallow.  Finding the right balance between artful expression that carries meaning and the straightforward conveyance of facts is just the sort of problem-solving I’m writing about.  If you’ve never spent a few days carrying around the dilemma of what to say or write, you’ve missed out on the rich array of possibilities that might have nudged you over that period of time.

Try it.

Imagine you are going to propose to someone by renting a billboard on a highway they drive.  You’ve got the first and the last parts of the message, i.e., “You make me feel like_______________________!  Marry me…”  Now carry that blank around with you.  Force yourself to think about it everywhere you go.  Turn off the radio in the car, take a walk by yourself, stare out the window and THINK until monkeys come out of your nose.  Do not settle for the first candidate to fill in the blank, even if ultimately you come back to that one as the best choice.  Let frustration and annoyance have their way for a few seconds each time you draw a blank on the blank.  Sooner than later you’ll have something that works, something satisfying, something worthy of…

Who You Are.

May I invite you to follow me on Twitter?  It’s fun and unintrusive.  2 examples of my recent Tweets:  Chicago out 4 Olympics. So tell the gangbangers to stop training for the drive-by target shooting event.  And…  “Freedom ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free.”  Is that why I always do way more than I commit to?  Here’s the link:  http://twitter.com/thomassullivan .  I’ll also be happy to put you on the mailing list for free newsletters packed with stories and adventures, including photos, if you email me at: mn333mn@earthlink.net.  Past newsletters/photos are archived under News & Articles at the author’s website below by my illustrious California webmaster, Cap’n Ed Picard.  Also, if you tried to find my old columns and the links no longer worked, it’s because StorytellersUnplugged recently moved to a new hosting location with David Niall Wilson now keeping it dynamic and up to date.  But my webmaster, working tirelessly, has just finished posting new links to those columns as well.  You’ll find them all on my author’s website next to the newsletters.  Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.  

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan

http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com/  

http://twitter.com/thomassullivan