Robert McKee: Story: Style, Structure, Substance...
Christopher Vogler: The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers
Shawn Coyne: The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know
John Yorke: Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story
Larry Brooks: Story Physics and Story Engineering and Story Fix Larry Brooks

Lately I've been wooed into the left-brained world of editors and screenwriters writing about story structure. Studying these books (blogs, podcasts, presentations...) has helped me see my work's real flaws.

But because I'm more analytical than creative myself, I'm in danger of over-engineering my novel to fit a Grid, a set of Tent Poles, or a Hero's Journey. It's getting hard to tell whether I'm improving my story or ruining it.

A metaphor keeps springing to mind from a craft I'm more proficient in: sewing.

( Crimson velvet and chiffon ruffles )

This is so cool! I'm standing here at my work desk and I feel like I'm across the street at my favorite downtown coffee shop.

It's Coffitiviy, "Ambient sounds to boost your workday creativity".

I've read in a bunch of places lately (most recently this Smithsonian article) that creativity is boosted by cities, by metaphorical friction among ideas, by noise. The ambient sound of a coffee-shop, studies are suggesting, is just right.

I'd like to spend creative time at cafés--and god knows I live in a place with plenty of them--but several limitations have made this impracticable: my laptop is just a hair too big to cart around, and there's no slimmer computer in my near future. Keyboard+tablet has yet to equal actual fast typing for me.

Also, my creativity-hours and my caffeine-hours don't usually overlap. Or when they do, I'm still in my jammies with crazy-hair.

But right this minute, with Coffitivity playing in my earphones, I'm feeling oddly looped in, yet not chafed, engaged but free-floating, comfortably alone in my head but surrounded by a sense of people. It's surprisingly pleasant!

Try it and let me know what you think.

This post was going to be about thinking styles. azurelunatic and I were discussing the different brain processes in knitting and crocheting, and yourlibrarian and I were talking about pattern thinking and the autistic brain, and I was having Very Thinky Thoughts.

I riffed for a while on my brain, my making-of-things, my peculiar set of limitations and strengths. I took some photos. I coded some links, I wrote and deleted some sentences.

But it's a sunny Sunday in June. I had a bacon cheeseburger for lunch, I've spent my morning beta-ing the work of two writers, both brilliant, and you know what? My brain isn't up to the task of making coherent noises about itself.

So instead, here are some pretty pictures of beadwork, as metaphors for two modes my brain likes to use.

( Photos illustrating what I'm not capable of articulating in words. )

I've spent part of my four-day weekend at Sock Summit 2011. It's a convention for people who knit socks.

I'm not a sock knitter (or wearer, for that matter), and am only a marginal knitter, and I live just up the street from the Oregon Convention Center, so my participation was pretty casual, and I can't give much in the way of insider rapture.

But as a general craftswoman I can say that Sock Summit is a very impressive thing. I took a specialized class ("Cast On Cornucopia") on Thursday, and today I had a chance to wander around the vendor market; both experiences confirmed that creativity is absolutely going off the charts.

People are putting new materials to ancient uses (carbon fiber knitting needles! Plastic drop spindles printed on 3D printers!), and pushing out the boundaries of labor-intensive manual processes like hand-painting fleeces. You can knit with a range of fibers unimagined by the average American knitter thirty years ago (bamboo! hemp! yak!). You can accurately replicate socks worn by 12th century peasants in Norway, and socks worn by rich gentleman-golfers in 1890, and silk stockings from a Constantinople lady's wardrobe in 1500.

And here's the thing: there's not a craft or hobby being practiced today that isn't experiencing the same kind of explosion of creativity, digging into the past, borrowing from the future, leveraging technology, and spreading ideas across the world.

So although I managed to escape the show floor with only one purchase, a handmade wooden tabletop swift of truly elegant simplicity and functionality, I came away absolutely loving life in the 21st century, and glad to be alive in such an exciting time.

I thought this was a terrific photo.

( It's of my brother, at his work. )