writers block
I "met" Roger von Oech recently in cyber space, and have really been enjoying his posts on creativity. A few days ago he wrote about deadlines (the deadline for the book I am writing right now is 15th January, and if I am very lucky I might just squeeze in under the door.) But today he writes about the opposite thing – that phenomenon where it’s only when you leave the studio or the desk and wash the dishes or walk on the beach that the rest and space suddenly gives rise to the elusive inspiration. Roger has a lovely story here:
designer Christopher Williams tells a story about an architect who built a cluster of large office buildings that were set on a central green. When construction was completed, the landscape crew asked him where he wanted the pathways between the buildings.
"Not yet," the architect said. "Just plant the grass solidly between the buildings."
This was done, and by late summer pedestrians had worn paths across the lawn, connecting building to building. The paths turned in easy curves rather than right angles, and were sized according to traffic.
In the fall, the architect simply paved the pathways. Not only did the new pathways have a design beauty, they responded directly to user needs.
go read the rest of the post here: Creative Think: Pause for a Bit.
2 Responses to “writers block”
Comments
-
author musician theologian
Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
-
Search
-
-
Happy New Year, Maggi.
Good luck with your deadline . . . and then pausing for a bit (I bet you’ll get a ton of ideas in the three days following your deadline).
— Roger
A great example of what I think architects call a “desire line”. It happened in Mcr’s Piccadilly Gardens a few years ago when it had been revamped – people walking a sensible line between two points, that the council eventually paved over to “formalise”.