creativity Archives ~ Stephanie Golden

“Found” Trump poem

December 22, 2016 StephanieGolden creativity, inspiration, writing

This month’s assignment for my Girls Write Now mentoring program was “found poetry.” There are several ways to “find” a poem, but our assignment was an “erasure poem,” where you take an existing text and black out lines and words. The poem is what’s left, rather like Michaelangelo and the block of marble. I was in a stream-of-consciousness sort of mood, so I downloaded a transcript of a Trump campaign speech, and to my surprise—since I’m in no way a poet—produced something that I rather like. (WordPress doesn’t let me reproduce the line breaks nicely, so I turned it into[…]

Creativity all dried up? Try this

May 10, 2015 StephanieGolden creativity, inspiration

If ever your brain battery feels dead, this exercise will give you a recharge. I learned it in my Girls Write Now mentoring program and tried it out with Winkie Ma, my teenage mentee. Start by generating a random list of 5 words. We used a smartphone set to Swype. Squiggle a finger across the keyboard and it’ll pop out a word. We took turns doing this til we had five words. (Half the fun is inventing new swyping patterns and seeing what words you get.) You can also use a website like this one to generate your words. Or[…]

EGGxercise: movement and inspiration

August 4, 2013 StephanieGolden creativity, inspiration, writing

You might think a choreographer wouldn’t have much to say to writers, but you’d be wrong. Twyla Tharp has been creating dances for a long time, and from what I can tell has fought and won all the battles involved in making something out of nothing. Her book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life absolutely nails the issues any creative person faces. For example: “Writer’s block means your engine has shut down and the tank is empty. Being blocked is most often a failure of nerve, with only one solution: Do something—anything.” Then she gives a bunch[…]

Social media & inspiration: Google+ or minus?

August 16, 2011 StephanieGolden creativity, inspiration, writing

In a race to beat the other Stephanie Goldens out there, I got myself an invite to Google+, and secured possession of—my name. A real coup, right? I haven’t learned yet how to use Google+, but once I do, it’ll be a big boost to my career… right? Not according to computer scientist Jaron Lanier, who says social media just reduce everyone to little more than the database fields they fill in to create their profile. In his manifesto You Are Not a Gadget, he attacks two notions popular among his community of techies: the “wisdom of the crowd,” which[…]