Living a creative life
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I want to say up front that I don't advocate gambling in the conventional sense. The house always wins, and there are no exceptions to this rule. However, I've been thinking this week about Kenny Rogers' 1978 song The Gambler (written by Don Schlitz in 1976). Specifically, the…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I've been thinking a lot lately about inciting incidents and the different ways they can be used in fiction. An inciting incident generally launches the primary conflict or action in a story. Joseph Campbell referred to the inciting incident as a call to action. Sometimes our characters seek…
Continue reading ➞ Insightful Examples of Inciting Incidents
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I watched a delightful documentary recently (as I write this, it's currently streaming on Netflix). Bathtubs Over Broadway introduces us to the world of corporate musicals from the perspective of former Late Show With David Letterman writer Steve Young. First, Young discovered the likes of The Bathrooms are…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I've come across two works recently that got me thinking about the importance of analysis in creativity. The first was a passage from Steven Hyden's 2018 book Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock. The book explores, among other things, cultural aspects of…
"What a man thinks is his own business. What matters is what he does." -from The Honourable Schoolboy, by John le Carre Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. In a recent post, I referenced Robert Caro's diligent research process. If you haven't read any of Caro's books, either The Years of Lyndon Johnson series…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I recently read George Michelsen Foy's 2016 book Finding North: How Navigation Makes Us Human. It deals with physical navigation and how our approach to navigation has changed over time. On a deeper level, it's a meditation on how we humans find our way in life and how…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure Many of us played with building blocks, or similar toys, as children. Lego bricks, Lincoln Logs, and Erector Sets were common during my childhood, and they're all still available to kids today. I never had Lego sets, but I did have Lincoln Logs and an Erector Set. (The…
