Monday, October 20, 2008

creative timing


I just heard an interesting bit of news on the radio this rainy morning having to do with creativity. New research shows that people are most creative from 1-4 a.m. This strikes me as odd because most of the people I know are in bed at that hour except my brother Chris, the Ecuadorian night owl. The least creative time is 4:33 p.m. These researchers also found that folks are most creative in the shower which leaves me wondering how on earth they measured that? But they found that most people didn't write their creative thoughts down on paper and so lost them altogether. Maybe we writers are simply the ones who make it to the pen and paper stage.

Personally, I get my creative ideas when I take walks. Music helps, too! Right now I'm listening to the soundtrack from The Last of the Mohicans. It's the perfect music for thinking 18th-century thoughts! I loved the movie, especially the cliffside scene when Uncas and the evil Indian, Magua, fight. I won't say more in case you haven't watched it except to add that it was filmed on the Biltmore estate in beautiful North Carolina and takes your breath away.

An editor friend of mine recently told me she thinks my books are like the Little House on the Prairie books but with adult themes. I thought this was very clever and I'm flattered. For all of you Little House haters out there, I am truly sorry! But I love being compared to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Even Wyatt likes the Little House series and has read Farmer Boy several times (probably for those wonderful descriptions of frontier food).

Speaking of food, it would be a wondeful day for a kettle of soup and some cornbread. The snow level is pretty low on the mountains this morning though it's pouring rain here in the valleys below.

He gives snow like wool;
He scatters the frost like ashes.
He casts forth His ice as fragments;
Who can stand before His cold?
Psalm 147:17-18

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