Category: Reflection

Elevate Creativity

How can you improve your creative endeavors?

One thing that is beneficial to gaining skill in your art is studying those who excel in doing it. Also, those who are less apt can teach much.

Reading voraciously and a wide variety of forms, genres, and styles will lead you to handle language with more facility when you write. It will improve your editing ability as well. There are a plethora of writing craft books that can provide instruction, especially if you do the recommended exercises. Writing every day is a practice any serious writer does well to engage. If the current creative project is stuck writing something else, even a journal entry will keep the imagination working.

Artists and photographers can learn much by observing the work of others and others at work. We live in a magic time when we can watch videos of many things which may be instructive.

Daily practice in a sketchbook or taking photos can significantly improve the craft. Books and manuals are also instructive.

A website or blog used for exposure and to challenge one to work regularly is an ideal practice. All creative endeavors require daily work and devotion—acting, musical instruments, singing, well, really almost anything.

As you will find elsewhere on Haphazard Creative, I do not constrain creativity to the liberal arts. I have a strong and unshakeable belief that every person has creative skills. If we, as created in the Creator’s image, genuinely resemble Him, we have creative abilities. So, even if one is not into liberal arts, cooking, organizing, parenting, homemaking, mechanical skill, and all else requires creativity.

Feed your creativity with things that bring you joy and nourish your soul. Music, long drives, dancing, swimming, hiking, telling jokes, the things you consider guilty pleasures all fill the well. If you keep the well full, you will find yourself in the flow when you attempt to create.

I hope this inspires you. I do believe creativity is a working of love, and our world needs love tremendously. Be well, and take care of the spark that ignites creation in you.

© Jo Ann J. A. Jordan

I finished my journal today and had the pleasure of choosing a new one.
Volume Eight of However, Whatever, Whenever, Wherever, Why? I believe I began using that title in mid-2017. With a title like that it is inspiring just to open it. I need all the help I can obtain.

Late Entry

Adventures with my fountain pen continue. It came apart again, and I could not get the nib out of the lid. I got some help, and it now works for the time being—what an experience.

Do you use tools that complicate creative endeavors? Do you have a story?

Haiku, anyone? Write some. Here are two of mine.

Dreams begging to come
True, all depend on you, me,
To make them our own.

What we most desire
Is never beyond our reach
If we chase it down.

I have a few prompts that maybe will get you primed for creation:

If you were warned about 2020 in 2019 or before, what would you have done differently?

If fire threatens your home, which ten items would you most want to take with you, your family, and pets? Someone I asked said ten rooms, which is extremely clever. I meant items.

If you are in the US, what is your plan if those you wish to win the election do win? If not?

I am trying to focus on creativity a bit more; I hope that it is attractive and encourages you to work.

© Jo Ann J. A. Jordan

Close Enough

The rain falls down
Your hand in my pocket, warm,
Somehow we have to
Get ourselves out of the storm,
The umbrella comes between
The closeness that should
Forever be you and me.

It is not our grandparent’s
Wonderful life, we must be careful
Round here, to succeed, to survive.

Fires, they rage, so wild,
Out of control, gotta set up –
Some smoke control,
Breathing gets harder, exerts,
Until it almost sets up hurt,
Clouds on the horizon, but no,
It is the fire’s dark exhaust.

It is not our grandparent’s
Wonderful life, we must be careful
Round here, to succeed, to survive.

Screaming fills in the streets
One says this; another speaks that,
Someone with matches, pyromaniac fun,
The other has a gun in a pocket, heat,
That one has a knife in a boot, treat,
Control fled, no one knows how to live
Everyone is subject to being dead.

It is not our grandparent’s
Wonderful life, we must be careful
Round here, to succeed, to survive.

Your hand in my pocket,
Please do not let me go,
This world is a desolation,
Join me in the isolation
Check the windows, the doors,
No ingress for strangers
Can we now possibly afford.

It is not our grandparent’s
Wonderful life, we must be careful
Round here, to succeed, to survive.

Who have we finally become
Who cannot communicate,
Cannot show respect enough
To avoid a world that deteriorates?
Where did the love go, tell me,
We are all in this together,
If not, we will likely all fall.

It is not our grandparent’s
Wonderful life, we must be careful
Round here, to succeed, to survive.

© Jo Ann J. A. Jordan