Author: Fred Slusher

5 Ways to Spark Creativity

People who write for a living, and really artists in general (regardless of their medium), often reach points where their well has run dry. We’ve all been there. Staring at the blank page before you. Open up the dirty window. Let the sun illuminate the words that you cannot find…looks like I’ve veered into Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield! But Natasha has a point. Sometimes you just need to get out of your own head (i.e. feel the rain on your skin) to get your creative motors cranking. There are innumerable ways to unfunk yourself but I hope these five help you to get started.

#1: Clean Out the Clutter

The time-honored image of the messy artist is as old as art itself. And I’d be lying if I said that most of the people I’ve come across who create for a living don’t struggle with keeping their living spaces in working order. After all, who cares about dirty dishes or piles of laundry when you have the next Great American Novel to write?

The sad truth however is that it’s hard to hone in on something like a tricky plot point when your living space looks like something off of Hoarders. So start by tidying up the area you spend the most time in. Pick up and throw away trash, take your dirty dishes to the kitchen, make your bed, and make liberal use of a can of Febreze.

Once your living space looks neater, there’ll be more space in your head for what matters most.

Once your living space looks neater, there’ll be more space in your head for what matters most.

#2: Take a Nap

It’s hard to do anything if you’re not well-rested, and sometimes the thing you need most is a good long nap. That poem, story, or blog post can wait until later. Turn off your phone, shut the blinds, and clear your mind. When you wake up, you’ll be ready to get to it. If you’re lucky, your dreams may give you ideas for your next project!

#3: Read, Read, Read!!!!

If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.

Stephen King

Stephen King said it best. Although this advice applies primarily to writers, its applicability transfers to any creative endeavor. People who want to make great films need to be watching great films. You can’t become the next Scorsese or Gerwig by watching the same shitty Mark Wahlberg movies over and over again ad nauseam. You can’t become the next Picasso or Rembrandt if you don’t study the Masters. Art begets art.

You can’t become the next Scorsese or Gerwig by watching the same shitty Mark Wahlberg movies over and over again ad nauseam.

#4: Give Yourself Permission to Suck

God, this is a hard one, especially for perfectionists like yours truly. But anything worth doing well is worth doing badly at least 6,543,789 times in order to perfect your craft. If you’re afraid of failing and never allow yourself to clear your cache by putting vomit on paper, you’re never going to write anything worth reading. Now, I’m not saying to go out in the world and share your shitty Grey’s Anatomy fan-fiction, but I’m not not saying to either.

#5: Find Your People and Share the Burden

Everyone needs a sounding board. There are innumerable collectives for creatives to join and if you can’t find a group you like then make your own. Having another person or a group of people to share your work with and give you insightful critiques is invaluable. An added benefit is that by participating in just such a group, you also expand your network and become a node on the networks of everyone who’s in your group as well. You never know which contact will help you get agented or sell your first book or agree to exhibition your work. So connect, connect, and then connect some more.

Conclusion

I hope these five tips will give you a good starting point toward sparking creativity in your own life. The creative life is extremely rewarding for anyone who is willing to give it their all and I wish you nothing but success and happiness on your journey as not only an artist but a human being as well. Take care, my friends.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Book Review: The Guncle: A Novel by Steven Rowley

The Guncle: A Novel by Steven Rowley

If Full House’s Uncle Jesse had been an actor instead of a musician and gay instead of a womanizer, you’d have Gay Uncle Patrick (referred to affectionately as GUP by his niece and nephew).

When we first meet Patrick O’Hara, he’s a semi-retired former sitcom star who’s exiled himself to Palm Springs with nothing but a big empty house and his coveted Golden Globe to keep him company. He’s witty, charismatic, and wholly self-absorbed—a stereotypical Hollywood darling if ever one graced the screen.

His tranquil life is interrupted when his best friend and sister-in-law Sara passes away from a long illness. He learns that in addition to the tragedy of Sara’s death, his brother Greg is addicted to painkillers and needs to check himself into rehab for the duration of the summer. While he’s in rehab, Greg asks Patrick if he will take care of his children, Maisie and Grant.

Initially, Patrick is aghast at the prospect of being the sole caretaker to two young children who have just lost their mother, but he reluctantly agrees. It’s only for the summer, after all, and he feels like it’s the least he can do for Sara—a final act of kindness.

Patrick’s first bumbling interactions with his niece and nephew are comedic gold because it is obvious Patrick is not used to entertaining children. His oblique pop culture references would be lost on almost anyone outside of a drag bar, so he might as well be speaking Japanese for all Maisie and Grant understand him.

Throughout their stay Patrick realizes how much he’s been missing from his life. As taxing as the children can be at times, they give him purpose, direction, and clarity. In the midst of grieving for Sara, he also starts processing the loss of the love of his life which we learn happened several years prior to the begging of the story. He finds his way, so to speak, at the same time he’s helping Maisie and Grant learn to navigate the scary new world that’s deprived them of their mother and isolated them from their father.

The story benefits from having several strong supporting characters, and Rowley’s narration of the audiobook version of his book is superb. The Guncle is a perfect mix of comedy and drama, with plenty to satisfy casual readers at the beach as well as the more serious-minded members of the literati. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Favorite Quotes from The Guncle

Anger, when justified, is glorious.

How can you tell where you’re going when you’re always looking up at the past?

You don’t want to live with Grandma and Grandpa. Why? Because they think Fox is news and raisins are food.

You can’t spell nemesis without me, sis, and you do not want to make me your enemy.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Poem for the Day: August 15th, 2021

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire

Questions for Miriam by Warsan Shire 

Were you ever lonely?


Did you tell people that songs weren’t 
the same as a warm body, a soft mouth?
Did you know how to say no to young men 
who cried outside your hotel rooms?
Did you listen to the songs they wrote,
tongues wet with praise for you?


What sweaty bars did you begin in?
Did you see them holding bottles by the neck,
hair on their arms rising as your notes hovered 
above their heads?
Did you know of the girls who sang into their
     fists 
mimicking your brilliance? 


Did they know that you were only human?


My parents played your music at their wedding. 
Called you Makeba, never Miriam, never first 
     name,
always singer. Never wife, daughter, mother,
never lover, aching. 


Did you tell people that songs weren’t the same
as a warm body or a soft mouth? Miriam, 
I’ve heard people using your songs as a prayer,
begging god in falsetto. You were a city 


exiled from skin, your mouth a burning church.

All Aboard the ARC: The Littlest Yak by Lu Fraser (Author) and Kate Hindley (Illustrator)

The Littlest Yak by Lu Fraser (Author) and Kate Hindley (Illustrator)

***Note: I received a free digital review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***

Gertie is a little yak with a big heart. Eager to be big and tall like the other yaks in her herd, Gertie tries her hardest to make herself bigger and stronger but finds her negative self-perception tested when an emergency calls for someone smaller like her.

In the end, Gertie learns that it’s not the size of your horns that matter but the strength of your character, and that everyone in the herd has something amazing to offer regardless of their size or ability. Reminiscent of the story of Rudolph with his blinking red nose or Kyo Maclear’s picture book Spork, The Littlest Yak shows readers of all ages that sometimes the things we don’t like about ourselves end up becoming our greatest assets. Five stars and two thumbs way up for Gertie, who now holds a coveted spot as one of my favorite heroines in all of children’s literature.

Five stars and two thumbs way up for Gertie, who now holds a coveted spot as one of my favorite heroines in all of children’s literature.

The Littlest Yak is due to be released in the U.S. on October 1st, 2021 and is now available to preorder wherever books are sold.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Quote for the Day: August 14th, 2021

Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism by Alice Walker

We are all substantially flawed, wounded, angry, hurt, here on Earth. But this human condition, so painful to us, and in some ways shameful – because we feel we are weak when the reality of ourselves is exposed – is made much more bearable when it is shared, face-to-face, in words that have expressive human eyes behind them.

Poem for the Day: August 13th, 2021

The Late Hour: Poems by Mark Strand

From the Long Sad Party by Mark Strand 

Someone was saying
Something about shadows covering the field, about 
how things pass, how one sleeps toward morning 
and the morning goes. 

Someone was saying 
how the wind dies down but comes back, 
how shells are the coffins of wind 
but the weather continues. 

It was a long night
and someone said something about the moon shedding its 
     white 
on the cold field, that there was nothing ahead 
but more of the same. 

Someone mentioned
a city she had been in before the war, a room with two
     candles 
against a wall, someone dancing, someone watching. 
We began to believe 

the night would not end. 
Someone was saying the music was over and no one had 
     noticed. 
Then someone said something about the planets, about 
     the stars, 
how small they were, how far away.

Original Poem: Holding Onto a Reason by Fred Slusher

This is the first time I’ve posted my own poetry on my blog so naturally I’m terrified. Here you go.

Holding Onto a Reason by Fred Slusher 

i write memoirs of crushed rose petals and 

poetry aided by artificially 

-intelligent algorithms predicting 

what it is my thumbs want to say 

next but sometimes a different agenda

takes root. on an island of one, there is 

no need for a king or a dream because 

in the world of the self, there is only 

the now — no need for dreams or sleep or 

dreams or dreams or dreams or the sound of 

rain slapping the truth out of the earth. the 

closest i ever came to nirvana was the first 

time i saw lady gaga perform yoü and i 

bearing down on a baby grand in heels higher 

than heaven studded in leather and the 

glimmer of the stage lights brighter than 

broadway than all the stars in the sky. 

somethin’ ‘bout lonely nights and my lipstick 

on your face. i swam through a river of my own 

blood to wash up on another unforgiving 

shore. i clutched years like shards of glass 

in my clenched fists and decided to keep 

holding onto a reason.

Note: The phrase “somethin’ ‘bout lonely nights and my lipstick on your face” is borrowed from “Yoü and I” by Lady Gaga (Stefani Germanotta) who also wrote the lyrics. © 2014 Interscope Records.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

© 2021 Fred Slusher. All rights reserved.