Creativity :)

This week in English 1101, we read Barry's "Two Questions."  It spoke on how writers are often plagued by the two questions, "Is this good?" and "Does this suck?" and how that differs from simply letting your ideas flow freely, no matter their attributed quality.

The previous week we viewed this video, "Creativity Takes Time," showing through an experiment with children how creative we can be when we're not on a time crunch. 

Lately, I've been witnessing these two every day with my little brother, Samuel.  He is in the fifth grade, and is a little boy genius...except for the fact that he can't spell!  I've been trying to help him study for his weekly spelling tests, but also just to spend time with him and play around.  At first I was simply trying to get him more interesting in it, but now I really enjoy it too! We fell into this habit of making up little stories to remind him how to spell a given word and what it means. Some would be short like the one we made for the word "denim..."

There once was a baby lion in denim jean pants

who walked up to a man sitting in the corner

and said, "Hey Daniel,"

"I'm in a den!"

...and so, denim.  Others were long drawn out stories connecting multiple words like the one we invented for "society" and "vital..." This one is always told with a funny accent and always acted out! This is the much abridged version.... :)

There once was a big man named V. 

Like a giiiaant V! ..and he always thought he was sooo tough.

Everyday after school he would beat up on poor little I.

I said to V, "Man you are soo tall, but since you are mean,

I'm going to have to take away your last l...

Meanwhile, E, who lived in the country,

Heard of the violence going on in the urban society,

And so he thought it was vital to move

Into the middle of the city.

 

so-ci-e-ty: "e" in the middle of the "city," and v-i-tal: "tall" minus an "l"... Get it? Some of these end up being plotless stories, others just a simple play on words, but some of them turn out really creative.  It's exactly like Barry's "Two Questions."  When it doesn't really matter what it turns out being in the end, we can be free to truly come up with anything, and we do!

 

 

 

This can also be tied back to the video, "Creativity Takes Time." Because of our schedules, on Wednesdays we are always hard pressed for time.  When we only have the ten minutes before he goes to bed, we try to hurry through them, and the little characters don't have time to aimlessly wander about until they find that grand adventure. It is definitely much more fun when we have a whole hour to make up stories for eight words.
When we have time and have conquered the fear of accidently making a "bad" story, we set ourselves free to dream up crazy things and to have fun with the people we love.