A first work, reworked again | Arena theater takes John Grisham's 1st novel to stage

A Washington DC theater brings first Grisham novel to the stage

(AP, via seattlepi.com)  -- A novel that once drew a pile of rejection letters from major publishers and was slow to sell when it was finally printed will have another life onstage.

"A Time to Kill," John Grisham's first novel, went on to sell more than 15 million copies after the success of his second book, "The Firm." [A Time to Kill] was made into a movie in 1996. 

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Grisham, not a lazy man, has admitted to having been a lazy lawyer: he would sit in the courtroom and work on novel drafts on legal pads during sessions.

As most successes who hit it big early in a particular career, some see Grisham as an overnight success. But you'll find that most "overnight successes" take a long time to achieve that success. If the work is there, then the work may take on a power of its own, much out of the control of the artist. Such is the case with Grisham's first novel.

I recall from the 1990s that, early on, while he was working on his writing, he was a regular reader of Writer's Digest, a magazine that provides craft, industry and motivational information for active writers of many kinds.

- Jon O.

What does it mean to be creative?

I consider myself a creative type. What is creativity, to me? Well, I'm just some guy, not brilliant but not ignorant, someone who has working class, third-generation American roots, a college education and a somewhat troubling childhood. My father had gotten his Ph.D. (English) and worked in universities most of his life. 

Creativity, to some, seems to only be artistic things, those things alone: drawing and painting, architecture, writing, singing, and acting. That is not so. Those are indeed creative endeavors, obviously, but those are artistic talents. People are talented in many ways. Frankly, I've come to suspect that those who are artistically talented are the least relevant to real life things, unless they are also grounded in healthy business or other practical matters as well. Raw artistic creativity is just that. Brilliant works, such as those by JRR Tolkien, George Lucas, CS Lewis, and others do not come from a plain creative place. Good works are, if with nothing else, done through hard work. There are no lazy geniuses. 

Creativity is more than artistic talent; business leaders who recognize this -- and who embody it -- are those who bring the most promise to our economic and societal practices. Whether they are highly creative themselves, or embrace those who are highly creative in their ranks, those who run things will do better to sustain a creative climate in their business. To put a sharpened point on it: If business operations are obsessed with the bottom line and getting the most benefit for the least payout, then we are no better than slave-traders. 

There is such a thing as being "too creative," I must quickly point out. The saying "experience is the best teacher" is an abbreviated way of drawing a line between good practices and those efforts similar to wrangling cats.

I helped imagine, launch, operate, and manage three media operations. Since my youth, I've been very much into drawing, writing, acting, music, and just plain imagining (dreaming, daydreaming, not paying attention, whatever you want to call it). 

While I've gone in a direction that moves me away from creative media, in some ways, in my job in recent years -- business proposals and technical communications -- the creativity has never left me, and it has, in a variety of ways, served me well in all of my work efforts. I have artistic talents, while undisciplined they might be at times, but I am also a creative thinker. I am very right-brained and left-handed. 

- Jon O

The Three Threats to Creativity - Hurting the Business of Thinking Wildly

Dr. Teresa Amabile, on a Harvard Business Review blog, looks at three killers of creativity -- the creativity that results in new or improved technology, new products, better stuff. She worked at Xerox during the creative development that gained us -- much from other companies inspired by Xerox's vast creative efforts -- icons and GUIs (graphic user interfaces) of the Apple Macintosh and MS Windows, and laser printers, and more.

We're talking engineering creativity, product and process concepts -- the creativity that has led to things such as the airplane, automobile, ergonomic chairs and offices, lasers, lightbulbs, PDAs, the World Wide Web, and -- via Xerox's PARC -- desktop computers, graphical user interfaces, and more. Even those who aren't engineers can appreciate this because these are the activities that led to the tools and toys we use every day.

In tough times, people's minds are on many things, not just their work. Some suffered a layoff. And that includes many of the crafty ones. Call them eccentrics, or just generalists, creative minds are tense, perhaps, about what might happen to their lives, their jobs, tomorrow. Why not allow the staff to think about improving things that they do, rather than sit in some sort of rigid state of dragging through their predictable tasks for 40-plus hours a week? It's a time to free the talents of the needed ones, that of the underemployed ones, not insist on heads down and moments on target. That's a quick dabble into my view of gaining from wandering minds. The accomplished Dr. Amabile's post starts:

Creativity is under threat. It happens whenever and wherever there's a squeeze on the ingredients of creativity, and it's happening in many businesses today. According to the Labor Department's most recent stats, productivity is up. But stretching fewer employees to cover ever more work in our job-starved recovery is no way to run the future. ...

MORE, hit the LINK: http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2010/11/the-three-threats-to-creativit.html

- Jon O

Vonnegut offers some simple thoughts on writing style

Kurt Vonnegut on Writing With Style - Vonnegut on Style

[Vonnegut] offers seven deceptively simple principles:

* Find a subject you care about.
* Do not ramble, though.
* Keep it simple.
* Have the guts to cut.
* Sound like yourself.
* Say what you mean to say.
* Pity the readers.

Pity our readers? Vonnegut goes on to explain that our "audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient teachers, ever willing to simplify and clarify--whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales. That is the bad news."

"The good news," Vonnegut continues, "is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited."

These days, About is a massive collection of what we now refer to as blogs. It is one of the originals, I think. If you enjoy writing, aspire to write, teach writing or have any interest in writing, the About.com section on Writing -- Grammar & Composition -- with Richard
Nordquist is an easy bit of usefulness and some encouraging, quote-filled lessons on a wide variety of things.


- Jon O.

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