Friday, July 3, 2009
Happy July 4th
Tomorrow is July 4th--Independence Day! It's a wonderful day for many of us to remember how lucky we are to live in the USA, and enjoy the freedom and privileges we have here that so many people in the world do not have. My mother's mother came here from Argentina as a young girl; my mother's father was born here but his parents came from Austria-Hungary. My father's father's family came from russia; my father's mother's family also came from Austria-Hungary. I have heard many colorful stories about how they all came to the USA. They have one thing in common: they all wanted a better life for themselves and for their families. The chance to have freedom to worship as they chose; or to be able to work hard and earn a decent living; or to escape poverty and hopelessness they had faced previously. America was adream--and still is for many people. I have been lucky to have met and become friends with people from different countries--Chile, Peru, Serbia, China. All have come here to find a better life. Let's hear it for America! We may have problems but we have freedom!
Thursday, July 2, 2009
How to be uncreative
I was once sent on a work-related course entitled Managing innovation in a changing environment or some such nonsense. In short it was a How to be creative course. To my surprise, I learned something.
We had a creativity test and the results generated a CQ rating, which like the IQ rating had a bell-shaped distribution curve. 150 meant you were a creative genius. 100-150 meant you had a creative tendency. 60-100 meant you were destined to spend your life wondering why your toaster's instruction manual is written in French because you're not creative enough to turn over the page to the English section. The lowest possible mark was 60. I scored 57.
If you've read my novels, you're probably thinking this explains everything, but several interesting insights then emerged. We were redistributed around the room based on our CQ rating, putting the six people with the highest CQs on one table, the second six on another table, and so on. This involved little movement. As everyone had sat with their fellow departmental workers, each table already represented a functional area of the company and each area attracted people of similar CQs.
Hence, the marketing department had sat on the top table and they were the company's creative geniuses: six individuals in gaudy suits, pink shirts, slick-backed hair and shades. The next table had six bearded, sandal-clad computer analysts. The final table had the least creative people: the accountants, all lacking in creativity but making up for it with their sober suits.
Each table was set a problem. The accountants, including myself, trundled into our room. As we had an hour, we read the brief for twenty minutes. When everyone had finished, we voted on who should lead the group. That person claimed the marker pen. We then had a round of brainstorming in which everyone outlined what they thought the solution should be. When those ideas were documented, we discussed which idea was the best. With much nodding and support, the leader wrote a presentation on the board, although he included footnotes for the rejected ideas so as not to hurt anyone's feelings.
This left us with ten minutes. We voted on who should do the presentation and the winner was the man with the marker pen. He ran through the presentation twice, after which we agreed that it reflected the group's considered opinion. Then we returned to the main room where our leader presented our findings. Our collective ideas were well-considered and practical and our leader presented them well, but unfortunately our ideas weren't that inspiring and he received only bored indifference from the course.
When the other groups had done their presentations, we got feedback and of course the problem's solution was unimportant. What was important was whether we'd been creative effectively. And our polite method, which produced uncreative answers but got the job done in the allotted time, was different to what happened elsewhere. By all accounts, life in the room containing the six most creative people was different to life in the uncreative room.
After the creative types received their brief, they stormed into their room and within seconds launched into a fevered set of arguments, although nobody bothered to read the brief. After twenty minutes of one-on-one, two-on-one, one-against-all-comers arguments, most to do with office politics, last night's football, anything they could think of, the course facilitator demanded quiet. In the two-second pause that followed he reminded the group that they had a presentation to do.
There was another two-second pause. All eyes turned to the marker pen. A scuffle ensued after which one man emerged triumphant in gaining possession of the pen and thereby control of the group. Then the brainstorming began. It was based on a he-who-shouts-loudest-gets-their-solution-written-down basis. The brainstorming continued for the next thirty minutes. Hundreds of ideas emerged, all duly written down. The man with the pen covered every inch of the white board, every page of the provided flipboard. Even the board that was out of bounds because the pen contained the wrong type of ink and the writing wouldn't wash off got used.
Finally the facilitator demanded quiet again and reminded everyone that they now had ten minutes to bring together their ideas and produce a presentation. At this stage, the people who didn't have pens made a terrible discovery. Instead of writing down everyone's ideas on the boards and flipcharts, the man with the pen had ignored what everyone had shouted out and had written down his own ideas instead.
An argument raged. Office politics got another airing. A flipchart got kicked over. More pens were demanded. Someone found a wet cloth and many of the man with the pen's ideas got a good wiping. But then the hour ended and there wasn't time to fill up the boards with everyone's ideas and to bring together a presentation.
With no solution to the man with the pen's duplicity, the facilitator headed off a potential punch-up by suggesting a compromise: everyone would do a thirty second presentation of their own ideas. Everybody had an alternate suggestion, but the facilitator shouted them down. So on returning to the main room, the man with the pen stood up and did his presentation, but to ensure only his ideas got heard, he spoke slowly and way longer than his thirty second allocated time.
Rumbles and grumbling emerged from his colleagues. But when they tried to storm the stage and shout him down, the facilitator interrupted and sent them back to their table. The creative types weren't happy. Their ideas were inspired and they were desperate to let the group know what geniuses they were, but as the tutors then told us, that wasn't the point. It was the way we managed our creativity that was important, not the creativity itself. And they hadn't managed themselves at all.
After the initial debacle, they then split everyone up and created groups with different levels of CQ. Each group had one creative genius, several layers of creativeness, and one uncreative person like myself. Those groups were more productive. They came up with good ideas, debated them, polished them, and presented them, and all within the allotted time.
So what did I learn? It's this: being creative doesn't help you write novels. If you're a creative genius who invents a new way to boil water while you're having breakfast, but before you can write down the idea you've already moved on to devising a new format for poetry. But before you can write that down, you realize where all the missing coathangers go, you'll never have the staying power to finish a novel.
If, on the other hand, you're uncreative, you may have enough fortitude to see it through. Admittedly, the finished novel might be dull, but the market for dull finished novels is a lot bigger than the market for exciting never-started ones!
http://ijparnham.blogspot.com
We had a creativity test and the results generated a CQ rating, which like the IQ rating had a bell-shaped distribution curve. 150 meant you were a creative genius. 100-150 meant you had a creative tendency. 60-100 meant you were destined to spend your life wondering why your toaster's instruction manual is written in French because you're not creative enough to turn over the page to the English section. The lowest possible mark was 60. I scored 57.
If you've read my novels, you're probably thinking this explains everything, but several interesting insights then emerged. We were redistributed around the room based on our CQ rating, putting the six people with the highest CQs on one table, the second six on another table, and so on. This involved little movement. As everyone had sat with their fellow departmental workers, each table already represented a functional area of the company and each area attracted people of similar CQs.
Hence, the marketing department had sat on the top table and they were the company's creative geniuses: six individuals in gaudy suits, pink shirts, slick-backed hair and shades. The next table had six bearded, sandal-clad computer analysts. The final table had the least creative people: the accountants, all lacking in creativity but making up for it with their sober suits.
Each table was set a problem. The accountants, including myself, trundled into our room. As we had an hour, we read the brief for twenty minutes. When everyone had finished, we voted on who should lead the group. That person claimed the marker pen. We then had a round of brainstorming in which everyone outlined what they thought the solution should be. When those ideas were documented, we discussed which idea was the best. With much nodding and support, the leader wrote a presentation on the board, although he included footnotes for the rejected ideas so as not to hurt anyone's feelings.
This left us with ten minutes. We voted on who should do the presentation and the winner was the man with the marker pen. He ran through the presentation twice, after which we agreed that it reflected the group's considered opinion. Then we returned to the main room where our leader presented our findings. Our collective ideas were well-considered and practical and our leader presented them well, but unfortunately our ideas weren't that inspiring and he received only bored indifference from the course.
When the other groups had done their presentations, we got feedback and of course the problem's solution was unimportant. What was important was whether we'd been creative effectively. And our polite method, which produced uncreative answers but got the job done in the allotted time, was different to what happened elsewhere. By all accounts, life in the room containing the six most creative people was different to life in the uncreative room.
After the creative types received their brief, they stormed into their room and within seconds launched into a fevered set of arguments, although nobody bothered to read the brief. After twenty minutes of one-on-one, two-on-one, one-against-all-comers arguments, most to do with office politics, last night's football, anything they could think of, the course facilitator demanded quiet. In the two-second pause that followed he reminded the group that they had a presentation to do.
There was another two-second pause. All eyes turned to the marker pen. A scuffle ensued after which one man emerged triumphant in gaining possession of the pen and thereby control of the group. Then the brainstorming began. It was based on a he-who-shouts-loudest-gets-their-solution-written-down basis. The brainstorming continued for the next thirty minutes. Hundreds of ideas emerged, all duly written down. The man with the pen covered every inch of the white board, every page of the provided flipboard. Even the board that was out of bounds because the pen contained the wrong type of ink and the writing wouldn't wash off got used.
Finally the facilitator demanded quiet again and reminded everyone that they now had ten minutes to bring together their ideas and produce a presentation. At this stage, the people who didn't have pens made a terrible discovery. Instead of writing down everyone's ideas on the boards and flipcharts, the man with the pen had ignored what everyone had shouted out and had written down his own ideas instead.
An argument raged. Office politics got another airing. A flipchart got kicked over. More pens were demanded. Someone found a wet cloth and many of the man with the pen's ideas got a good wiping. But then the hour ended and there wasn't time to fill up the boards with everyone's ideas and to bring together a presentation.
With no solution to the man with the pen's duplicity, the facilitator headed off a potential punch-up by suggesting a compromise: everyone would do a thirty second presentation of their own ideas. Everybody had an alternate suggestion, but the facilitator shouted them down. So on returning to the main room, the man with the pen stood up and did his presentation, but to ensure only his ideas got heard, he spoke slowly and way longer than his thirty second allocated time.
Rumbles and grumbling emerged from his colleagues. But when they tried to storm the stage and shout him down, the facilitator interrupted and sent them back to their table. The creative types weren't happy. Their ideas were inspired and they were desperate to let the group know what geniuses they were, but as the tutors then told us, that wasn't the point. It was the way we managed our creativity that was important, not the creativity itself. And they hadn't managed themselves at all.
After the initial debacle, they then split everyone up and created groups with different levels of CQ. Each group had one creative genius, several layers of creativeness, and one uncreative person like myself. Those groups were more productive. They came up with good ideas, debated them, polished them, and presented them, and all within the allotted time.
So what did I learn? It's this: being creative doesn't help you write novels. If you're a creative genius who invents a new way to boil water while you're having breakfast, but before you can write down the idea you've already moved on to devising a new format for poetry. But before you can write that down, you realize where all the missing coathangers go, you'll never have the staying power to finish a novel.
If, on the other hand, you're uncreative, you may have enough fortitude to see it through. Admittedly, the finished novel might be dull, but the market for dull finished novels is a lot bigger than the market for exciting never-started ones!
http://ijparnham.blogspot.com
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Where Do Your Ideas Come From?
This is possibly the most frequent question I get when people learn I’m a writer. The answer is often ethereal and elusive. Things just pop into my head. Most of the time, however, I can point to exactly what triggered the series of fortunate events that germinate, sprout, and flower into a novel.
Scent is important to me. I have a sensitive nose and love fragrance. Good, natural fragrances, not manufactured chemical perfumes. One day, I picked up a book on the history of perfume and—voila!—the idea for Family Guardian was born. That story became my first Avalon sale, my first sale, and won the National Reader’s Choice Award for the Best Regency, much to my shock.
Wanting to target a book at a specific line, I did a little research and read about missing federal gold around the time of the Civil War. What would happen if a lot of people went looking for it? What if one of them found it? I sold that story to Barbour Publishing. Learning that New Jersey had a glassmaking industry in the eighteenth century led me to The Glassblower, my next release and first in a three-book series.
One of my favorite inspirations is part of a nursery rhyme, something we used to say while counting buttons on our clothes to find out what kind of man we would marry: ‘Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief’. I changed the ‘chief’ to ‘chef’, made the professionals all women, dropped them into the 1890s, when women were becoming sort of accepted as professionals, and voila! My next Avalon series.
My latest sale, to Baker/Revell, is a little harder to trace. It just bloomed like a wildflower in the garden of well-tended blossoms, an amalgam of many bits and pieces of my knowledge on midwives in history, the War of 1812, my love of early U.S. history, as well as early 1800s British history and how closely the two were tied by loyalty and dislike and those who would like to start or stop a war according to their own purposes.
Sometimes, ideas just come from plain, hard work. My agent asked me for a proposal on a certain type of book and specific era. I dug into my research materials and began to simply read. I read three books in a week and the proposal was there, coming into focus like a Polaroid photograph developing before one’s eyes.
So if you ask an author where her ideas come from, don’t be surprised if she gets a vague look on her face, or gives you an answer that has you getting glassy-eyed.
Scent is important to me. I have a sensitive nose and love fragrance. Good, natural fragrances, not manufactured chemical perfumes. One day, I picked up a book on the history of perfume and—voila!—the idea for Family Guardian was born. That story became my first Avalon sale, my first sale, and won the National Reader’s Choice Award for the Best Regency, much to my shock.
Wanting to target a book at a specific line, I did a little research and read about missing federal gold around the time of the Civil War. What would happen if a lot of people went looking for it? What if one of them found it? I sold that story to Barbour Publishing. Learning that New Jersey had a glassmaking industry in the eighteenth century led me to The Glassblower, my next release and first in a three-book series.
One of my favorite inspirations is part of a nursery rhyme, something we used to say while counting buttons on our clothes to find out what kind of man we would marry: ‘Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief’. I changed the ‘chief’ to ‘chef’, made the professionals all women, dropped them into the 1890s, when women were becoming sort of accepted as professionals, and voila! My next Avalon series.
My latest sale, to Baker/Revell, is a little harder to trace. It just bloomed like a wildflower in the garden of well-tended blossoms, an amalgam of many bits and pieces of my knowledge on midwives in history, the War of 1812, my love of early U.S. history, as well as early 1800s British history and how closely the two were tied by loyalty and dislike and those who would like to start or stop a war according to their own purposes.
Sometimes, ideas just come from plain, hard work. My agent asked me for a proposal on a certain type of book and specific era. I dug into my research materials and began to simply read. I read three books in a week and the proposal was there, coming into focus like a Polaroid photograph developing before one’s eyes.
So if you ask an author where her ideas come from, don’t be surprised if she gets a vague look on her face, or gives you an answer that has you getting glassy-eyed.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Colin Firth came home with me...
We were on our second visit to Barnes & Noble for the week so hubby was looking at magazines while I happily searched the shelves. Then I spotted husband and our two grown sons across the store, looking in my direction. All three are six-one to six-seven so it wasn’t difficult to see them, but what caught my attention were the wide grins on their faces.
When I reached their side, husband held out a magazine, “We thought you would want this.”
My love for Mr. Darcy is well known in our house. Our sons watched Bridget Jones and Pride and Prejudice with us…and may become Jane Austen fans with my daughter-in-law’s help. But on this day, it’s Colin Firth on the cover of Durham Magazine that holds our attention.
Colin Firth and Orlando Bloom were in Durham to film MAIN STREET. According to the article in this issue, Colin Firth acts as nice as he looks. Wow! Imagine that interviewer…
But the reason my heart fills with joy on this summer Saturday in the bookstore isn’t because of our love for coffee and books. The feelings that almost overwhelm me come from the support and encouragement my family gives to my writing efforts.
Imagine picking up a magazine because they know Colin Firth is inspiration for one of my heroes. It’s this encouragement from my husband and sons that keeps me going when rejection knocks, when story ideas falter, when one more rewrite seems too much to endure.
Getting published is great. But the support and encouragement from my family has made this journey to publication worth the effort.
How about you? Share the stories of support that kept you going in your writing career.
When I reached their side, husband held out a magazine, “We thought you would want this.”
My love for Mr. Darcy is well known in our house. Our sons watched Bridget Jones and Pride and Prejudice with us…and may become Jane Austen fans with my daughter-in-law’s help. But on this day, it’s Colin Firth on the cover of Durham Magazine that holds our attention.
Colin Firth and Orlando Bloom were in Durham to film MAIN STREET. According to the article in this issue, Colin Firth acts as nice as he looks. Wow! Imagine that interviewer…
But the reason my heart fills with joy on this summer Saturday in the bookstore isn’t because of our love for coffee and books. The feelings that almost overwhelm me come from the support and encouragement my family gives to my writing efforts.
Imagine picking up a magazine because they know Colin Firth is inspiration for one of my heroes. It’s this encouragement from my husband and sons that keeps me going when rejection knocks, when story ideas falter, when one more rewrite seems too much to endure.
Getting published is great. But the support and encouragement from my family has made this journey to publication worth the effort.
How about you? Share the stories of support that kept you going in your writing career.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
And the Winners Are . . .
The winners of my contest posted Wednesday are:
Cami and Kathye. I'll be emailing you for your addresses soon.
Cami and Kathye. I'll be emailing you for your addresses soon.
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