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ideaguy
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Name: Bruce
Gender: Male
Interests: Old movies; promoting small groups in churches; doing creative, wacky things for and with my kids; writing; speaking in elementary schools; drawing for kids anywhere in the world God might lead me
Expertise: Old movies; illustrating; leading small group Bible-studies; writing for kids; public speaking; creativity. It's all about the ideas, man.
Occupation: Illustrator, Author, Speaker.
Industry: Books, art, public speaking
Message: message me
Member Since:
8/2/2004
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| Here's what's happening in my life. I'm on the road, doing schools. Another hotel night, though this one is particularly nice. I'm very, very thankful that God has provided a regular flow of work in these troubled times.
The big news is that since my one son, Nate, is studying in London, we decided to fly over my teenage son, Will, to spend Thanksgiving break with him. The two of them are really good friends. And what a chance to see a great city! Nathan has spent the last six weeks navigating the city and knows how to get everywhere. He has his own dorm room with a kitchen area (the college has no meal plan), so Will can just bunk with him.
We had wanted to all go and visit Nate, but it just wasn't realistic. As it is, the plane fare is steep and the only way we can afford it is to take it out of my PayPal account that slowly builds from the sale of my online digital books. The cost of the tickets is worth about 4-5 months of sales. (Yeah, it's not exactly setting records, these book sales.) I had been saving up for a good digital SLR camera -- something I really need. But I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for Will to hang out in a supercool city with his brother and friend. It's worth a little self-sacrifice on my part.
When I was 13, I spent a summer in Germany with my family. Part of that time, my 19-year-old brother was there and we spent long, leisurely days hiking the trails between villages and castle ruins. It is still indelible in my brain as one of the best time I ever had with a sibling. One of the best summers of my life.
I'm hoping for a little of that for Will.
Perhaps he'll have enough time to work on his English accent.
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| One of the most important days in my life had to do with a picture prompt. It was my first day of 9th grade. I was two weeks late coming to high school, due to my father’s extended research abroad. It felt like jumping onto a moving train. In the confusing swirl of classes and locker combinations and slightly miffed teachers, I felt completely lost. Then I walked into Mrs. Peterson’s English class and everything changed.
Leaning along the chalkboard were laminated pages from The Family of Man, a thematic collection of photographs. As I found my seat, I caught a glimpse of expressive faces and dramatic poses. It intrigued me. Mrs. Peterson explained that at the beginning of each class we were select a page, find a photo on it that struck a chord, and write a narrative to accompany the photo. The quicker we came to class, the better the selection.
You can believe I was the first one in every class! I couldn’t believe my good fortune. This wasn’t school – it was like playtime. The photos intrigued me. The stories poured out of me into the mottled black and white composition book. My imagination fully engaged, it wasn’t long before I decided to tackle my first illustration job, volunteering to draw scenes from Homer’s Odyssey. That was the beginning of my passion for narratives – one that burns as brightly in me today as it did then.
Thanks to Mrs. Peterson and her pages of photos.
Picture prompts can be tremendously motivating. I say “can be” because far too often they’re just the opposite – stultifying and boring. I once saw a picture prompt from a state standardized test: a father and son standing at a ticket window. From that, kids were supposed to write a narrative. Let me ask you. What would you write? Granted, an active imagination can get nourishment from the most meager of meals. But such a dull image is unnecessarily daunting to the average young writer.
What makes a good prompt?
Mystery. Something should be undefined, open to interpretation. It should pique curiosity. What is going on here? Kids should wonder.
Humor. Nothing grabs a child’s attention like something funny. Humor makes it accessible; it puts the prompt at his or her level.
Narrative. A good prompt should give a sense of being snatched from the heart of a gripping story. Something was happening right before; something is about to happen.
The picture prompts I’ve created for kids on my website tend to have a somewhat over-the-top jumble of elements – pirates, magic, talking animals, aliens. Sometimes all together! But that level of activity isn’t always necessary. I can remember one photo from Mrs. Peterson’s class  that caught my imagination: a boy was sitting in the top row of bleachers with his baseball mitt beside him, yelling at someone in the distance. Pretty simple. But it certainly has mystery and narrative. Depending on what he’s yelling, possibly even humor. Photo-journalistic images, if they have some of the above elements, will work just as well as something laden with magical possibilities.
That said, I think my favorite book of picture prompts is supremely and sublimely magical. The great illustrator, Chris Van Allsburg, created a wonderful collection of single illustrations called The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. In my humble opinion, any one page in that book is more effective than his award-winning longer works. Each page would be a fantastic picture prompt – funny, mysterious, and begging for a narrative.
Do you have a favorite source for picture prompts? If so, I’d love to hear of it. If I get enough, I’ll post a page on my site with a list of them.
Btw, I did track down Mrs. Peterson after I had my first book published, just to thank her for all she did for me. Inspirational teachers should know of their impact, don’t you agree?
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| This is one of my weekly emails to teachers about creativity applied to kids and writing. Even if you don't work with kids, I hope it will be encouraging. At the end, I have a question for you.
I came across a short quote that struck a deep chord in me:
“There is a sometimes almost unbearably exciting prospect offered by a sheet of blank paper and an idea.” Mary Stoltz, author of three Newbery Honor books
A blank piece of paper unbearably exciting? What do you think? When was the last time you could scarcely contain yourself over a blank piece of paper? (Now, a blank check -- that would be a different story!)
Most of us have a hard time understanding Stoltz’s unbridled enthusiasm. Certainly it would be a rare child today who would leap at the potential of an unmarked page. Why? The easy scapegoat would be technology. As we watch the demise of newspapers and the disappearance of handwritten notes, we fault the easy lure of digital entertainment. Kids look askance at paper and pencil because it’s becoming as obsolete to them as eight-track tapes.
But technology isn’t the issue. It isn’t the form of expression that’s missing. We could rephrase her quote to have the exciting prospect an open Word document – though it’s pointedly less poetic. What is missing is the second ingredient in her statement: not just the blank paper but the idea. It’s the combination of the two that becomes exciting to the point of unbearable.
Is unbearable too strong a word? Eudora Welty, the wonderful novelist and essayist, didn’t think so, though she uses a different word in her book Words Into Fiction:
"(A writer’s) subject may accrue, build up and build up inside him until it’s intolerable to him not to try to write in terms he can understand: he submits it to the imagination, he finds names, sets something down.”
Intolerable. Unbearable. The building internal pressure of an idea that becomes so important that the writer just has to write it down. This potential is what drives many authors. Ideas simmer until they come to a roiling boil and the lid just has to come off the pot. This is the kind of excitement we want our young writers to have before they sit down to write.
How do we create such anticipation? Last year I devoted a couple of Sparklers to how I think we, as writing coaches, can build excitement in kids. I’ll summarize here. First, kids have to believe in their ideas. If they don’t think their stories concepts are significant or original, if they don’t value them, they won’t be excited to put them onto that blank piece of paper or that open Word document.
Secondly, they need to know they’ll have an audience for their work. No artist works for his or her own pleasure; there’s always an expectation that the work will be shared.
And thirdly, the creative brainstorming stage is crucial for the building of that full head of steam. Bouncing around “What if” questions as a class, making random associations and laughing about the combinations, digging into the background of an imaginary character – these help to build up that anticipation for the opportunity to write down the story.
We want kids fit to burst with stories. That’s when blank pages become “unbearably exciting.”
So here's the question: what in your life is like a blank page with unlimited possibilities?
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| I'm not sure why I'm posting this, but I've been trying to figure out what my future is on xanga. I've been posting from time to time some creative things I'm doing and occasional news. My readership has been decreasing -- particularly since a whole slew of my xanga friends jumped ship to facebook. It's getting to the point when there seems to be no point in posting.
The one thing I haven't been doing is speaking from my heart about my faith and the everyday joys and frustrations of following Jesus. So, I figure, with nothing to lose, I'll talk honestly about where I am.
Ten days ago, I had an episode of what is being called "heart palpatations." Scared me, big time. After a series of tests, the palpatations continue but I am told they are nothing serious, which is a great relief, but are probably stress working itself out in strange ways. That is very discouraging to me. Sure, there are stressful things in my life -- particularly the insecurity of income over my whole career -- but who doesn't have stress? I find this discouraging because it's something that seems to run counter to the way I see myself. I think I handle stress well; I'm a fairly easy-going guy. My faith is real and significant. I have a great wife, incredible kids. I've actually been working on being more positive over the last year.
And yet, there they are: physical signs that I'm not handling life as well as I thought.
There's a part of me that wonders what kind of Christian this makes me. Shouldn't I be dealing with things better than this? Like I said, it's discouraging. But then, I remember what the core truth of Christianity is: God loves fatally flawed humans so much he paid the ultimate price to bring us back to him. My failures don't surprise me. They certainly don't surprise God. The longer I am a Christian, the more I see the deep roots of my selfishness and the more I marvel at his grace. I don't ever want to leave behind the sweet relief that comes from knowing that despite my failures, I am incredibly loved by God.
But there remains the unanswered question: what do I change in my life? How do I learn to handle stress better when I thought I was doing okay?
So I turn to you. Give me advice. What have you found that really de-stresses your life?
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| I'm back from the road, doing back-to-back schools on Wednesday and Thursday. Here are some of the best drawings I did in front of live audiences (the details are added later).
I think my favorite moment came when I had called up a random team of kids out of a 4th-to-6th grade audience. One of them was as Asian boy who beamed when I picked him out of a sea of raised hands. As I came back up to the front of the gym, a teacher rushed over to whisper to me, "His English is minimal, but I'll help him if he doesn't understand."
Here's the thing -- my wife and I have been very involved with non-native speakers. She was an ESL teacher all of last year. In Guatemala this past summer, I was using my "clear English" style of talking and somewhat belatedly asked my story-telling partner if she was insulted by it. She laughed and said that I was one of the only Americans on the team she could understand. So I was delighted to have this challenge in the critical part of my assembly.
So, when I came to him, I explained as simply as I could that I needed him to come up with an idea for the bad guy for our story, and it needed to be some kind of an animal. He grinned and nodded.
When I returned in a few minutes to ask him what he chose -- worrying that he wouldn't understand -- he said in a loud voice, "A GIANT BAT!" Cracked me up. I wonder what they mean by "minimal" English!
You can see the giant bat below. To draw that illustration, I had to do the bat, then flip the paper upside-down and draw the dragon.
Thoughts on the drawings?
    
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