There’s an interesting article at the Writer’s Digest site about left vs. right brain activity that I would strongly urge you to read.
Rather than sapping my creative juices, my afternoons at the canvas actually increased the energy and vividness of subsequent writing sessions. I began to investigate if there was something going on in my brain that would account for this cross-pollination and if this was something that other writers could use to invigorate their creative powers.
That sounds a lot like the principles behind Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. If you’re not familiar with the book, I’d suggest you do – there are a lot of interesting and useful ideas in there geared towards finding creativity and joy in one’s life.
Her concept of the artist’s date is one of them – basically, once a week, take an hour or two by yourself to do something that feeds your soul. It could be visiting an art gallery or museum, taking a bubblebath by candlelight, painting really bad watercolours, taking a walk along a beach, and so on.
And then there are her morning pages. Write three pages every morning of, well, whatever dumps out of your brain. The idea being – as I interpret it – that it helps to sort out the odds and ends in the brain and dumps the junk that’s getting in in the way. At the end, you have greater access to creativity and mental clarity. Which reminds me that I need to continue doing this again…
The secret for the creative writer isn’t to lean inordinately on one hemisphere or the other, but to manipulate the lively conversation going on between the hemispheres, through the corpus callosum.
I could get on board with this. One hemisphere for logic, the other for creativity. But good writing requires both, in my mind. Logic to keep the plot and characters consistent, creativity to make it interesting.
Think of it another way. The greatest discoveries in science, which, it could be argued, is all logic, requires a great deal of creativity to jump from A to B to E to Z, which is how the great scientists seem to work from what I’ve read and learned over the years.
In her 1983 book, Writing the Natural Way, Dr. Gabriele Rico brought Sperry’s findings to the field of creative writing through the practice of clustering. The writer develops an idea by writing a nucleus word, circling it, then quickly writing associated words around it, circling them and drawing lines that connect back to the nucleus. The neat mental trick that this resultant spider web performs is to take words generally under the purview of the left brain and turn them into a piece of visual art, which taps into the pattern-seeking abilities of the right brain. And that is where innovation comes from.
That sounds a lot like mind mapping, a more modern approach to brain storming, both of which I’ve found immensely useful. However it works, in my experience, mind mapping helps me bring order out of chaos, and yes, I do enjoy my little Borg references. 
The hemispheres begin to specialize at age five, when most children have mastered speech. The corpus callosum achieves full function between the ages of nine and 12, and the left brain takes over with a vengeance. Suddenly that kid who used to draw purple grass and blue suns turns into a literal-minded peer conformist. The pattern is reinforced by an educational system with a decided left-brain bias (the best creative minds tend to score a rather pedestrian 120 to 130 on the IQ test), and a lot of people just get stuck there.
Which all makes complete sense.
But now, for us creative types, how to regain that creativity and stop being a left-brain conformist? Ah, yes, that’s the challenge. More so for some of us than others, of course.
In my prior life, I was an accountant. Can’t get more left-brain than that. But then I gradually switched to writing, and in the eight or ten years since I started switching over, it’s been a challenge for me to find that lost creative side. This article provides some interesting clues and insights, and I can take a few lessons from it.
Like, maybe it’s time I got some fingerpaints… 
Okay, not fingerpaints necessarily, but why not fingerpaints? Or oil or acrylic or watercolour paints, or drawing, or some other form of art, with no requirements that it actually be good, to improve my fiction writing.
What did you learn from this article?
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
They don’t take handedness into consideration when teaching it. It’s ALWAYS taught to the left. The only reason I’m learning to the right is because I find it easier spinning right so I decided to learn to do it both ways. If someone has trouble doing multiple moves to the left they’ll sometimes allow them to do them all to the right instead but generally figure skaters are supposed to always spin and turn left. It’s enough to make me want to really study professional skaters to see if they all, always spin left. It would be interesting to see the results.
You’re ambidextrous friend sounds intriguing. She’d be a psychiatrists dream. *chuckles* Perhaps she has some cross-hatching against the corpus callosum that fires it in certain ways but not in others. Always doing math with the right hand is automatically a crossing because the right hand is predominantly creative and math is predominantly logical. Languages tend to be creative so writing those with her left hand is a sign of crossing again.
The most interesting thing is she can’t do it the other way around. If it were a true blend she’d be true-ambidextrous, able to do both on both hands. Intriguing, it’s the kind of topic we could study in-depth and learn so much more about the ways our brains function.
MRamsey, I have, too. Granted, I worked in offices full of them, but still. Not all accountings are boring with no lives – that stereotype is not entirely accurate. I’ve known quite a few who were… Interesting people.
And very very entertaining at parties. 
Would you send a few of those interesting accountants to Texas next thursday? I have to go to my husband’s workplace christmas party. Yeah. Nobody gets down like the accountants. On the other hand, I’m a lawyer, but I practice criminal law. The lawyer parties get a bit wild for me.
It’s interesting what you said about creative types not being recognized for their intelligence in school. I’m going through that with one of my boys. He’s very bright and wildly creative and original. He’s gifted at math and science but always gets marked down severely because his pages are messy and he doesn’t show his work.
The school wants him to go to tutorials for math. When I asked why, they said it was because of his grades. I had to pull his papers out and show the teacher. He had points off for not putting a heading on the paper (not even his name), points off for not showing his work, points off for writing all over the page and scribbling. His actual answers to the math problems? He missed one. The kid doesn’t need tutorials, he needs an administrative assistant.
But the tidy, logical, quiet child will get held up as the standard. Oh well, I love him and encourage him for who he is. There are a lot of engineers and architects in my mother’s side of the family. I suspect he may be another one.
*rant over*
Would that I could, Soccer Mom.
And some of the accountants I know did get down and party like, well, normal people. No, honest! I’m not making it up or anything!
Your son sounds a lot like what I and my oldest brother were like in school. I ended up learning that I had to be neat and tidy and show my work (hence me becoming an accountant, I think) even though showing my work never did me any good. My brother, on the other hand, never did learn that lesson. He’s now an alpha alpha computer programmer – you know, the kind that the other alpha programmers go to when they can’t figure out what went wrong. My brother also didn’t need tutorials. Like your son.
Sounds to me like you see your son for who he really is.
And I suspect you’re right. 
I’m right brained too. I’ve always been happiest when I’ve been creating something. Writing is a passion of mine. In all honesty though, I have Julia Cameron’s books and I think that you need an awful lot of discipline to actually do your morning pages and any other exercise in it. Books by Sark are another example of that – one of her books is Eat Mangoes Naked – both are good, and encouraging but ultimately discouraging in a way. I don’t know if that makes sense. If you don’t do morning pages, or give up on them, does that mean you’re any less of an artist?
With the education system, as your post mentions, being focused on left-brain, sometimes it is difficult to answer the call of the right side. IMO you either do or you don’t and no book will help you with that. You might think it’s holding your hand but you can find your way without that. It takes a lot of guts and I think that sitting down and fingerpainting (using an example not as a criticism) is just delaying the journey.
Not to sound all tough love here, I’ve been there with these books but ultimately they didn’t help me become more creative, I just became more frustrated. I just jumped in to writing, as an outlet and I’ve been happy ever since. I sing, and no book helped me with that, I just do it. Does this make sense?
No book, no matter how good, can help you achieve something like this with pat encouragement that doesn’t fit the person. I gave up reading self-help books a long time ago because of this. I’m right brained, I was born right brained (I guess) and I’ll always be right brained. No book has to tell me that or can help me when I’ve lost my way. Just my opinion though.
Oh…
It doesn’t seem to matter at all which direction the spin is done except that my teacher will talk me down if I spin right while she’s watching. I don’t think there really is a reason it’s taught to the left except perhaps whoever originally created the moves was predominantly left-brained.
If the moves were originally designed to the left then I’d assume it’s just always been taught that way with no conscious consideration for the need to do it one way or the other. I guess it also counts that rink skating is almost always to the left (anti-clockwise). If you watch professional figure skaters they then to use the the top of the rink to go left and the bottom to go right.
It could be vital in couples skating because if one only spins right and the other only spins left then they’ll always be out of sink and off footed. If both spun right it would be fine. In singles however, other than the technicality of it being left dominant it should be just fine. I wonder if judges would mark you down for spinning and turning to the right instead of left. I’ll have to look into it more carefully, just in case.
Meanwhile, for classes I learn it the way she wants me to do it. At home when I practice on my own I practice both ways. Perfectionist streak in me insists that if I can do it the ‘wrong’ way easily then I demand myself to do it BOTH ways easily.
I’m sure I got her hands wrong, then – it’s most likely the other way around! I have a difficult time remembering what’s what sometimes…
Thanks for answering my question about the spin. It was my experience in phys.ed. that things were done a certain way not because they were better or, well, because there was any actually logical reason other than it was more convenient for the phys.ed. teacher to teach it that way. It was always insisted that I do everything right-handed, for example. The worst was doing cartwheels and other gymnastics stuff – I can’t do them right handed. I fall down and hurt myself. I can, however, do them left-handed, and nearly failed the course because of it. Which I think is stupid.
Doing it a certain way because everyone on the ice goes counterclockwise makes a certain amount of sense to prevent collisions. Doing it a certain way if you’re skating as partners also makes sense. Doing it a certain way just because and for no other reason doesn’t.
I think it’s cool that you’re learning both. 
Please, let me know what you find out, other than the above. I’m now very curious.
Great post. I completely understand this, I had to feed my soul Friday before I could sit down and do any sort of writing, and that led to a bit of hookey. Also, watching my toddler draw, scribble and “write” as he calls it with wild abandon and passion, I see the creativity in progress–all right brain. Not the creative process mind you, actual creativity…raw, unadulterated, no outline, freeform and free. I think as writers (and other creatives out there) we need to find that balance (there’s that blasted word again) between that wild creativity (wild in a good way) and the order that logic, outlines, formulas and conformity in some way lead us to help our craft(s) take shape. For me, it’s my left brain that makes me edit, but the right brain that makes me write. It’s late, so I hope that made sense.
This was a very interesting — and timely! — post for me to read. I’ve spent the past several days musing about the creative process, because I’ve started noticing that I do my best writing when I’m supposed to be working on choreography (I dance, when I’m not writing and/or mothering!) Conversely, nothing sparks a good choreography like a deadline for a piece of writing. And I’ve been wondering how these relate to each other, and to the creative process as a whole.
I also draw inspiration from watching my little ones, although I have to say my just-turned-three-year-old is already fussy about things like coloring apples red and not blue (she won’t even let me color them pink). Maybe I should sign her up for some accounting classes.
I’m always intrigued by this topic. I’m predominantly right-brained. I struggle with logic. I’m terrible at maths and I’m working to improve my logic-minded processes (so that the house isn’t always a mess and I can actually keep track of all the things I’m doing).
It’s interesting to read that Michael J. Vaughn encourages the use of both sides of the brain in unison rather than allowing either dominance. Alternating between both hemispheres must encourage the interaction between them. That balance, as wordsmith called it.
I’ve found the left-right brain actions also affect other areas of our lives. I figure skate and when they teach skaters to spin or turn it’s always to the left. I struggle to the left but find it easy, almost effortless, to the right. I’ve begun to wonder if this is a right brain dominance (and decided to work on perfecting my spins in both directions). It’s also lead me to ask other artists who skate if they find a natural tendancy in spinning right vs. a trained tendancy to the left.
Anyway, this is a topic I could explore forever.
Thanks so much for the interesting post and link to more.
Wordsmith, you made complete sense. Especially this part:
I think that’s it, exactly.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been around kids firmly entrenched in creative behavior – ie, fingerpainting, drawing, play dough, and so on. I think it would be interesting to watch – really watch. I’m going to have to do that sometime and see what I can learn from it. I don’t let my creative side out with abandon at all – it’s very controlled. I think it would do me good to let go of the control. Know what I mean?
Elrena, you crack me up.
You know the greatest accountants aren’t made, they’re born… *guffaws* 
My anal retentiveness (also called attention to detail, and is really nothing more than a socially acceptable form of OCD – obsessive compulsive disorder) has been with me forever.
Is it not normal to obsess about correct colors at that age? There’s so much I don’t know… Your daughter sounds great, by the way.
Rebecca, it’s interesting that you mention Michael Vaughn working to keep both lobes in balance. I have a friend who is extremely intelligent and ambidextrous, but in a different kind of way than I think is normal.
For example, she takes advanced calculus courses for fun, but can only do math with her right hand. She’s fluent in English, German, and Dutch, but only with her left hand (not math or sciences, you understand.) When she’s speaking to people, she has to have a pen or pencil in her left hand, which will invariably play with the pen or pencil. She’s extremely intelligent, but can’t function that well if she’s using the “wrong” hand.
I could hypothesize and say that she doesn’t have balance and full-brain communication like Michael Vaugh is talking about, and yet, she’s extremely good at what she does, whether it’s left- or right-brain centric.
I also find your figure skating comment interesting – I didn’t know they were taught to spin in a specific direction. Does being right or left handed have a role in that? See, I’m curious – I’m right handed, but left eye, ear, and leg dominant, so I’m frequently confused as to how to do thinks physically, if that makes sense. And how much does the direction of spin matter? And why?
I know, you probably don’t have answers – I’m just curious.
MRamsey, I have, too. Granted, I worked in offices full of them, but still. Not all accountings are boring with no lives – that stereotype is not entirely accurate. I’ve known quite a few who were… Interesting people.
And very very entertaining at parties. 
I just used this technique last week. I was stumped for an ending on the novella I sweated over, until I sweated. I took a hot bubble bath, turned the jets on in the jacuzzi, and let the creativity pour out of my pores. It was relaxing, and after 30 minutes I had the ending to my story.
Bran
Ooooh, I’m so jealous – I miss being able to take hot baths. Sure, tropical country and who’d want to? Well, except for me, probably no one… :p
Sounds like a perfect solution to me, Branwyn.
Marilyn, I don’t think not doing morning pages or the artists dates makes anyone less of an artist, nor did I mean to imply that. I do, though, think that they can be good tools to help a person unlock more creativity. But, like all tools, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution – not all tools suit all situations or people, and any tool has to be tailored for a specific individual if it’s going to work.
If it didn’t work for you, then at least you know that and you can move on to something else if you need to or not if you don’t, and kudos to you for recognizing what’s needed.
I know that, for me, I sometimes need help. I can be rather blocked, for lack of any better way of explaining this, and it took me a long time to rediscover my creative side. Not that I’m done – I think I’ve only scratched the surface. For me, pottery or art lessons can make a difference. Sometimes, that side trip can later make the journey smoother.
I do understand your points, and I think for some people, specifically those who are more in tune with their creative side, they make a lot of sense. Get on with the job already and quit wasting time perhaps. Sometimes, morning pages or artists date or fingerpainting can be procrastination more than anything else.
But, like all things, take what works for you and leave the rest and temper it with self-awareness.
Heh.I’ve known some accountants who were very creative.
Nice post. My left brain likes the parts where why/how things work for writers is explained.
M