Creativity and Writer's Block

I've pressed through the wall of impenetrability. Having expunged from my first draft of Ecclesiastes 3 all boomer-isms, I was left with nothing but blank space. My efforts this week have been focused on filling that blank space with images twenty-somethings could relate to. I have no clue if I'm close but I feel good knowing I've come up with new 28 ideas.

Artist Jasper Johns nailed it. This to me is the essence of creativity--editing, rough drafts, mutations, and the elimination of vestigial words/images. Keep adding something often enough and soon you've got something.

Without boring readers by listing all my aborted attempts at gen-y-ifying Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, I can say this:

I've chosen to lighten the mood and not post images of Hiroshima (a time to make war), MLK assassination (a time to kill), hoarding (a time to keep), or wacky faith healers (a time to heal). Even though such images would have proven good fodder for student reactions, those images are heavy handed. Mr. Q is obtuse enough without my all to obvious renderings. I'll let his lectures carry the somber tone; he doesn't need my help.

This decision of course makes hash out of 3:14, "God does all these things so that we may fear him."  Mr. Q's point in this poem about time is, "providence is loaded with example after example of oddments, conundra, and counter examples of eudaemonism." Mr. Q is whining (justifiably) about the problem of evil. My artistic sense tells me to restrain myself, go light, and save my ire at evil until later; we've still got nine more chapters of morbidity to deal with.

In addition, drawing images inspired by 2012 pop culture will unfortunately mean in three years or less my book will fall out of favor. The shelf life of humor is notoriously short, increasingly so in our day of data smog.

Yet, it still feels right to me to lighten the tone in this iconic poem with humorous images that reflect 28 experiences in the life of a university student ("a time to weep" getting a tattoo or piercing, "a time to tear" holes in the knees of one's jeans, "a time to hate" boomers like me asking gen-y folk to fix my computer, and 25 more).

If anyone is keeping track, it took four pages of mind dump to come up with 28 new thumbnail images. The toughest verbs to gen-y-ify were, "a time to plant, heal, tear down, gather stones, and give up searching." At this stage I'm leaving behind this time poem confident I'll get another chance to edit it again after letting these ideas marinate for several months as I work on the rest of the text.

Doing something to something and then doing it again until you've got something unleashes dopamine in the pleasure centers of my brain which is incredibly fun!

Ecclesiastes 3, Again

I woke up with a bolt of insight on why my efforts to illustrate Ecclesiastes 3 wasn't working: the images are too boomer-ish.

My intended audience--university undergrads in 2012--hold boomers in high disdain. My rough drafts just ooze "old man." Do university students today have any recollection of Pete Seeger's Turn, Turn, Turn? Do they have any affinity with aging hippies, the Rolling Stones, WW2 photos, or Emmett Kelly (ancient even by my standards)? Bottom line: millennials and gen-y folk do not think I am groovy.

My creativity is pressed to the max. How do I get into the heads of early 20-somethings?

And if I could, do I want to lock this graphic novel into their 2012 time and space?

Look at these photos from the latest issue of Newsweek. Which of these tribes is my audience? And how do I translate my vision of Mr. Q's vision in their language?

I've been assuming university students today are like I was 35 years ago...interested in philosophy, the Big Questions, existentialism, and melancholia.

I'm having a creative crisis right now....so here's the plan: I'm going to carry this chart around and fill it in with ideas that I hope will be more relevant to my intended audience.

One final question: is my writer's block due to the complex nature of my immediate task (imaging Eccl. 3 for a tribe different than my own)? OR, am I just brain weary, uninspired, and experiencing synaptic fatigue? I'm keeping this blog in order to grapple with such questions.

Turn, Turn, Turn

I'm having problems with Chapter 3, "A time to be born, a time to die" (and 13 other couplets).  I've been wrestling with this text for three days and am frustrated. No matter which way I plan to illustrate it, it just doesn't feel right.

1.  Does the passage commend determinism ("there is a time determined for every event"), or prudence ("some times are better than others to engage in activities "). Based on 3:11 and 14, I opt for the former. I don't believe in determinism, but I believe that is the point of this long poem.

2.  If Mr. Q is describing an immutable providence behind birth and death and 26 other verbs, do I draw them schmaltzy and cute? Or raw like the rest of the book? Prudence tells me to draw baby bassinets and laughing children and peace signs and fighter jets. But then it won't fit with the tenor of the rest of the book.

3.  But if I draw baby Osama Bin Laden in a bassinet, planting of opium fields, and feeding Christians to the lions, I'm being true to Mr. Q's penchant for obscurity, absurdity, and depression. But then it won't fit with the tenor of pop culture and love of warm fuzzies.

The reason I'm choking is because I'm thinking too hard. Mr. Q's string of mostly benign actions could mean, "Here are some random things over which we have no control," but how do I draw those actions?

I'd love to use this photo as reference for a cartoony version of, "A time to embrace."

And then I'd like draw that nurse slapping the Navy man to illustrate, "A time to refrain from embracing."

But that "joke" is out of sync with the book of Ecclesiastes...as are the following.

"A time to cast away stones."

"A time to gather stones together."

"A time to plant" (which my aging hippy character would love):

"A time to uproot." (my aging hippy character will weep tears of sorrow).

"A time to mourn."

"A time to laugh."

Non of these images work for me. This is such a pivotal passage I gotta draw it right. One false move and I doom my graphic novel to kitsch-ville. If I nail it I could turn those 24 drawings into a poster.

How do I get unstuck? I just don't know.