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Asc2Com (MorganSoft) | 1994-02-04 | 20.5 KB | 268 lines

------------------------------------------ This is the eighth of nine chapters of THINK THUNDER! AND UNLEASH YOUR CREATIVITY Copyright (c) 1989 by Thomas A. Easton ------------------------------------------ CHAPTER 8: SEEDING THE MUSE In Chapter 6, we discussed editing, distilling raw material, obtained by writing or by turning on the THUNDER THOUGHT program, down to some kernel of sense. In Chapter 7, we discussed building such kernels up again, elaborating them into poems, articles, and stories by adding detail and implication. The creative process begins with an idea. As we said earlier, the two processes of editing and elaboration then take turns in recursive fashion as the creative person builds the idea into an elaborate sketch or scenario, edits it down, builds it up again, and edits it once more. She continues until she can find nothing more to edit out and think of nothing more to add. But where do the ideas come from? Many "uncreative" people have no trouble understanding how editing and elaboration work. "We could be as creative as anyone," they say. "If only we had the IDEAS. We want to know how you get that first notion to elaborate, so that you can then refine it and expand it again." This is a question that puzzles "uncreative" people when they look at writers and artists whose minds appear to froth with notions. "Where do you get your ideas?" is also one of the questions most often asked of writers and artists by journalists and other interviewers. Science fiction writer Barry B. Longyear says that his ideas come in a plain brown wrapper from a writers' supply service in Schenectady. Other writers have other answers. All, of course, are being facetious. The true answer is that they find their ideas everywhere--in things they see or hear, in things they read, in things their popcorn minds produce by recombining the stock of ideas, images, and words stored in their heads. Occasionally, a writer finds that the ideas refuse to come. This is a form of "writer's block," an understandably dread disease to anyone who must live by producing and elaborating ideas. It may be due to loss of confidence in the writer's abilities, and hence fear of failure. It may also be due to fear of ridicule, success, or self-destruction, just as can the non-creativity of non-writers. Writers so afflicted also wonder where the ideas come from, and they call Barry Longyear to ask for the address of his idea service. Sadly, the only idea service around is the popcorn mind. What people who wish to be creative need, whether they are non-writers or blocked writers, is something to stimulate that function of their minds. They need something to seed their muse. That something can be very simple. You can stick pins in dictionaries, encyclopedias, bibles, and other large collections of words. Whatever word or line the pin winds up on you then try to explain, to argue with, to free associate to, or to ask questions about--in short, to elaborate. It works, as do free writing--don't worry about topic; do keep that pencil moving--and standard brainstorming techniques (see Chapter 4). Or you can THINK THUNDER. That is, use the THUNDER THOUGHT program to automate the popcorn mind. But remember that the main thing that THUNDER THOUGHT requires is the ability and willingness to recognize sense when you see it, even in random computer output. Given that, you can find ideas in plenty by letting the computer program generate sentences. You can take the sentences as is or edit several of them down to get a topic. The vocabulary you give the program restricts the topic, and your critical mind supplies the sense. One major difference between this method and noncomputerized creativity is that where the latter often begins by elaborating an idea in order to edit, a thunder thinker usually must first edit in order to discover an idea. From there on, the processes are identical. THINKING THUNDER THUNDER THOUGHT offers several ways to automate the popcorn mind. The simplest, and the one we used for examples in the last two chapters, is that embodied in the "Narrative Brainstorm" and "Poetry" options on the initial options menu. If you choose one of these options, the program picks words at random from the lists of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs you have given it, plugs them into fill-in-the-blank sentence frames, displays the resulting "sentences," and saves them in a text file ('NARRE' or 'POEM') for you to work on later, using either the program's own editing utility or your word-processor. "Working on" these sentences means editing (throwing out the hopeless garbage, splicing, cleaning up grammar, rearranging, adding words) and elaborating (explaining, arguing, free associating, asking next questions). You find a kernel of potential, and then you make it make sense. The "Topical Brainstorm" works a little differently, as described in Chapter 5. You give the program a topic, such as "armpits." It then presents you with lists of six nouns (perhaps including "paint") and six verbs (perhaps including "sell"). You pick one of each, it picks a few more words, and then it gives you a sentence such as "A paint sell the brightly stinky armpits." You may then choose to save the sentence in file 'TOPIC' or try again. Your role in the word-selection process removes much of the randomness from the program's generation of sentences. Your role in selecting which of the resulting sentences to keep increases the level of sense recorded in file 'TOPIC' and simplifies your first round of editing later on. At the same time, your selection of words and sentences can tap your unconscious creativity very effectively. Even more effective in some cases is the "Chain Lightning" option. As with the Topical Brainstorm, you name a topic. The computer then offers a list of six nouns, you pick one, and the computer displays it linked to the topic. The process then repeats. As you add links to the resulting "guided free association" chain, the initial topic can be transmuted in startling ways which, as with the Topical Brainstorm, tap and stimulate unconscious creativity. You can end and save the chain (this time in file 'CHAIN') at any point. It can then be edited and elaborated just like a sentence, or a string of sentences. Related to "Chain Lightning" is the "Images" option. Here, as with the "Narrative Brainstorm" and "Poetry" options, you influence the result only by selecting the vocabulary the program has to work with and by editing the stored results. The program simply draws twenty adjective-noun, adverb-verb, and adverb-verb-noun combinations at random from the word lists, displays them, and saves them in file 'IMAGE.' The resulting word-combinations can be useful for adding to material produced with the program's other options, or as raw material in their own right, to be edited and elaborated. Finally, there is the "Free Association" option. This one works something like a reverse Chain Lightning. It offers you a word and asks you to type in the first response that comes to your mind. It then offers you another word and asks for another response. When you are ready to quit free associating in this way, the program saves the word-response pairs in file 'FREE.' You can use this option to explore the associations your mind is prepared to make or as a limbering-up exercise to prepare you for using other options. It may also prove useful for sparking trains of thought, especially if you find dealing with the utter nonsense of narrative brainstorms and random poetry difficult. APPLICATIONS THUNDER THOUGHT is a program for anyone who needs ideas. But it does not itself generate those ideas. Indeed, it generates unabashedly random nonsense. The key to its success is that that nonsense stimulates the human mind, just as do fireplace flames or the turbulence of a waterfall, into looking for, and finding, sense. The ideas emerge from our selection of fragments of the whole, our free associations, our elaborations. But the ideas do emerge. And they would not emerge if the program were not there to trigger the process. The program is therefore a catalyst for human creativity. It is, in fact, the first computer program for which anyone can make that claim. Who will find the program helpful? We have mentioned teachers who wish to teach editing or elaboration, who wish to give frustrated students help in finding topics for papers and impromptu speeches, who wish original, thought-provoking questions for exams. Teachers who wish to inculcate creative thinking might give their students copies of this program and encourage them to use it. Unfortunately, some schools lack enough personal computers to let students do this. In such cases, teachers may use the program to prepare about twice as many slips of paper, each one bearing a random sentence, as they have students. They can then put the slips in a hat and let each student pick one to use as a starting point for a creativity exercise, or as a topic for a paper. The student must then use the sentence as a starting point, either by finding in it sense or by treating it as a springboard for elaboration. Business people may also find THUNDER THOUGHT useful. They are in constant need of ideas for new products (such as armpit paint), for advertisements, and for promotional campaigns. And the program can stimulate their thoughts as well as it can anyone's. We have also mentioned writers suffering from writer's block. One of the common recommendations for dealing with this problem is for the blocked writer to begin writing, about anything at all. Sometimes, as he or she writes, the writing begins to focus on a topic or direction, and the block is past, at least for the moment. Sometimes, the writing fails to focus until the writer goes back over it, editing it down and then building it up from there, but focus it does, and the block is past. Sometimes it just plain refuses to go anywhere--the writer may actually be unable to write a coherent sentence--and the block remains. In the latter two cases, THUNDER THOUGHT might help by leaping directly to the editing stage. If you are a writer suffering from writer's block, turn THUNDER THOUGHT on first thing in the morning. Play with it for half an hour. Bring up the appropriate text files on your word processor, edit your brainstorms, and before you know it you will be hard at work on a new idea born of the interaction of THUNDER THOUGHT's throwing of dice and your subconscious. Poets too can benefit from the program. I, for one, never was a poet until I wrote this program. I had published just one superlatively awful bit of doggerel. But then, using the program over about a year, I was able to construct over 100 poems. As I write these lines, I have found publishers--my weekly paper, the newsletter of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, a science fiction fanzine, literary magazines, and popular magazines--for over a third of those poems, and that is a ratio that astounds "real" poets. The reason for my success, I think, is that THUNDER THOUGHT's random combinations of words guarantee more originality of image than is usual in poetry. THE CRUTCH PROBLEM There is a problem in using any aid to human abilities: The aid becomes essential, a crutch, and natural abilities wither. One famous example is what has happened with hand-held electronic calculators. They are everywhere, everyone uses them, and many people have lost the ability to multiply, divide, extract square roots, and compute percentages without their help. (Whether they miss that ability is a very different question.) Is there any danger that using THUNDER THOUGHT might similarly kill natural human creativity? That it might enslave its users to the computer? That a power failure might produce a truly insuperable writer's block? In the first nine months after writing the early version of THUNDER THOUGHT, I used it practically obsessively, writing poetry. After awhile, I realized that I wasn't producing much of the stuff that pays the bills for me--short stories, articles, and so on. I began to worry that using the program so much was indeed sapping my creativity, or that it was making me incapable of applying my creativity in any other way, or that I was exhausting all my creative energies on the poetry. So I stopped using the program. And over the next year my creative output soared, precisely as if using the program had not only helped me write poetry, but also had unleashed the creativity within me. I did not write any non-computer-assisted poetry, but then I never had done much of that before I developed THUNDER THOUGHT. Rather, I wrote precisely the sort of thing I always had, only more (a number of short stories and a novel) and even better (one editor called the novel one of the best things I have ever done). I still use the program from time to time, but only when I feel the yen to write a poem or two. It remains essential, in ways we will discuss in the next chapter, for that particular creative activity. The benefit of enhanced creativity remains for me to enjoy in my other activities. You too can benefit in this way from using THUNDER THOUGHT. The program is not just a catalyst for the creativity you apply to the nonsense it generates, but a Nautilus machine for your creative muscles. It will stimulate or catalyze your creativity while you use the program, but it will also, in time, make itself unnecessary. It is training wheels for the creative mind. That is, THUNDER THOUGHT will help you become more creative. Use it, and you will find ideas of which you would never dream otherwise. Use it, and you will create wonders the world would never see otherwise. Use it, and when you finally set it aside, months later, you will find that your creativity comes to you more often and more quickly than ever. With it and without it, your creative productivity will soar. Please bear in mind, however, that THUNDER THOUGHT automates and assists only the popcorn mind. That is, like more human popcorn minds, it generates only garbage. It is up to the critical mind--YOU--to discover and refine the gold hidden in its output. Happily, the program's garbage does stimulate the critical mind, and that is the aspect of your creativity the program will strengthen. If it also makes your popcorn mind more vigorous, that is because being exposed to all that utter, nonsensical garbage has to make you more accepting of the similar material you can pop on your own. That is, it has to loosen the inhibitions, the fears, that until now have stifled your popcorn mind. SUMMARY Ideas are everywhere, but not everyone finds them easily. For such people, THUNDER THOUGHT can perform an invaluable service by filling in for the popcorn mind, by seeding the muse. Its modes of operation include the prose-oriented "narrative brainstorm," the more poetic "poetry" option, and the interactive "topical brainstorm" and "chain lightning." The program can also generate images and facilitate free association. THUNDER THOUGHT does, of course, depend on your participation. YOU must give it the vocabulary it uses, and you must make sense of its utterances. And here is where the program taps your own personal, subconscious creativity, once in your choice of words to give the program, again in your choice of utterances to work with, and still again in what you do with those utterances. THUNDER THOUGHT's ability to serve as a source of ideas makes it invaluable to teachers, students, poets, and writers suffering from writer's block. There is also some reason to believe that regular use of the program strengthens one's creative muscles. It does NOT seem to make one's creative abilities dependent on the computer. ------------------------------------------------------------- Press <ESC> to exit this chapter and BROWSE the next chapter. ------------------------------------------------------------- Complete book and software available from R.K. West Consulting P.O. Box 8059, Mission Hills, CA 91346.