Category: creativity
-
Dead Guest Post :: The Fantastic Imagination
Today’s dead guest post is “The Fantastic Imagination.” In this piece, George MacDonald shows how the point of fantasy and science fiction is to change the physical laws of our world so that the spiritual — or moral or ethical — laws behind all worlds come to a sharper point. It’s one of my favorite pieces on…
-
Adapting Your Novel to Television is like Entrusting Your Daughter to Her First Date…
The process [of turning my novel into a TV series] that began with Sam Raimi, ended up in the hands of producers and writers that took things in a very different direction. The best way I can describe it (without the gory details); it’s something like letting your daughter go out on her first date.…
-
Policemen “Commandeered” Several Kayaks. Wait. What?!
Here in Penn Station waiting for my morning train I heard an absurd news report. Apparently a private plane crashed into the Long Island sound and local police executed a rescue mission. Now I don’t doubt the bravery of these men and should emphasize my gratitude, but a word needs to be said on the…
-
A peaceable man does more good than a well-learned
“First keep yourself in peace, and then will you be able to be a peacemaker towards others. A peaceable man does more good than a well-learned. A passionate man turns even good into evil and easily believes evil; a good, peaceable man converts all things into good. He who dwells in peace is suspicious of…
-
Why are you wearied with superfluous cares?
“Why are you consumed with vain sorrow? Why are you wearied with superfluous cares? Stand you by My good pleasure, and you will suffer no loss. If you seek after this or that, and will be here or there, according to your own advantage or the fulfilling of your own pleasure, you will never be…
-
Making The Joplin Undercurrent — Our Second Photonovel
Making the Joplin Undercurrent, our second photonovel, may be the trickiest ledge I’ve ever had to walk creatively. And you guys know I love walking that line. Two years ago through our working relationship with the Joplin Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, Mark Neuenschwander and I talked over the virtues and vices of Cold Brewed, which is…
-
We rarely recover spiritual loss
“Behold a temporal loss is mourned over; for a trifling gain we labour and hurry; and spiritual loss passes away into forgetfulness, and we rarely recover it. That which profits little or nothing is looked after and that which is altogether necessary is negligently passed by; because the whole man slides away to outward things,…
-
Imagination Confines Us in Mystery
“By means of the imagination we confine our mind within the mystery on which we meditate, that it may not ramble to and fro, just as we shut up a bird in a cage or tie a hawk by his leash so that he may rest on the hand.” — Francis de Sales
-
Doing Your Best Brings Happiness
“Often we imagine that we will work hard until we arrive at some distant goal, and then we will be happy. This is a delusion. Happiness is the result of a life lived with purpose. Happiness is not an objective. It is the movement of life itself, a process, and an activity. It arises from…
-
Whoever got you here won’t get you there. Or will they?
Last year, I was having a nice conversation with a communications executive about my frustration working for a second time with a former collaborator. Her response was: Well you know what they say: whoever got you here won’t be the one to get you there. It’s brutal, but true. For months after her advice, I…
-
Lone Wolf Artist: On Bad Myths, Guilds, and Societies
Some idiot along the way started lying to us. The lie was this: that genius, that true genial power, can only happen when some dude or dudette cordons themselves off from society to spend the next decade crafting his masterpiece. Lone wolf artists. It has many sources, frankly, but the lion’s share of the burden of the lone wolf artist…
-
Mosaics Fix Potholes
Thanks to Jeff Youngblood for this one. In a stunning work of culture care, Jim Bachor started fixing Chicago’s abandoned potholes with mosaics: Go see the rest here.