3 Creativity Hacks from Quentin Tarantino

To be clear: These aren't actually creativity hacks from the yammering mouth of Quentin Tarantino. They're some creativity hacks inspired by the fact that I watched "The Hateful Eight" the other night and am still not sure I liked it. I like Jennifer Jason Leigh, that's for sure.

Stay in your lane. Here's what Tarantino does well: over-the-top scenarios, uber-violence served with gore gravy, recreating old genres in new ways that make them seem fresh. He doesn't do nuance, he's not directing a Nicholas Sparks adaptation, and romance is a thing that mostly gets you dead. He's not veering from that. Ever. It enables him to be great at what he does.

Do the unspeakable. How times does someone say the n-word in "The Hateful Eight"? Sixty times, apparently. QT also has the lone female character be routinely abused: punched, knocked down, and, well, you have to see what happens in the end. Truly, no one is spared. In a way, "The Hateful Eight" is "Reservoir Dogs" with snow, but it works, when it does, because Tarantino says and shows things that others won't. Like brains exploding all over a woman's face.

Be beautiful. "Indeed when a mathematician becomes stuck and is not clear about what to do next the best advice is to do the most beautiful thing possible." Quentin is determined to bring to life two things at the same time: beauty and hideousness. In "The Hateful Eight," the 70 mm film, the Ennio Morricone score, and the crystal white winter Colorado landscape deliver a truly American tale of hate, revenge, and mayhem. It's a balance, really. Can you find the gorgeousness in your hideousness?

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My Twitter Protest

Ever since The Man I Didn't Vote For was elected, I've been protesting in the same way that most white people do: posting stuff on social media so I feel like I'm doing something but in fact I'm doing nothing. I combine famous quotes with pictures of president-elect Donald Trump. Here are a few for you to enjoy or dislike.

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength. pic.twitter.com/cDuqh3Gj9j

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) December 11, 2016

I trust no one, not even myself. pic.twitter.com/olGjX3jl7G

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) December 7, 2016

No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. pic.twitter.com/dyLGPrbYXe

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) November 23, 2016

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Today's Writing Advice

If writing something is fun, you're doing it wrong. pic.twitter.com/h0XMsEB5Jl

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) December 12, 2016

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The Three Stages of Creation

You can create things in three easy steps. Here they are:

Consume. Last weekend, I read a 372-page book and a 35,000-word essay and watched several movies. Other ways of consuming include direct experience, ie immersing oneself in nature, hanging out with weird people, seeing a play. In this stage, you are a passive, chewing maw.

Digest. I often spend this stage eating, comatose, or spacing out. Your brain just ate a giant meal. You need to give it a break while your subconscious breaks down the food particles of information that you just consumed. This won't feel like much, but it will be everything.

Regurgitate/Expel. Now that you have taken something in and your body/brain has processed it, it has to go somewhere. This is the creation part. You can verbalize it. You can write it. You can transform it into a piece of sculpture. What comes out is what you took in, made new by you.

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How to Work on a Long Project

I've been working on a longer project these days, which is new for me, and here are some things I've learned.

Quitters never win. It really is true: The only difference between success and failure is not quitting. But that's not exactly right, is it? The fact is that on the way to success, you will quit many, many times. I've been working on this project for over four years. I have quit several times. Now, I am close to the finish line of one stage of it. I will never give up. One day I will win.

Form a team. No one person can help you on your way to your destination. It's more like a road, and there are various people along the way. One points you in the right direction. The other hands you a bottled water. Another dusts off your butt when you fall on the ground. You will only recognize your team when you look back and see them lining the path you're on, waving you to the finish line.

Keep your eyes on the payoff. One thing that's cool about working on a longer project is that you exchange the shallow payoff of immediate gratification for the deep win of long-form evolution. When you stick with something for years, it changes you, shifts your makeup, alters your brain. This is a good thing. Without this kind of protracted commitment, you're a dog whining for a bone.

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The Perfect Holiday Gift

If you're looking for something extraordinary to gift that especially extraordinary person in your life this holiday season, I'd like to recommend "The Tumor." This is an e-short story I wrote about a couple that is insane, a strange medical problem, and weird shit that happens in Florida. It's been described as a "masterpiece." The best part: You get to pay what you want.

"My original idea was that we take her out in the yard, and that I, an expert marksman, shoot her in the breast at the site to which she had pointed, thereby destroying the tumor. My wife remained silent but shook her head vigorously. Apparently she did not agree with this unorthodox approach that I felt would provide her with the most expedient remedy."

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When Memoir Hyrbrids Go Wrong

I did not like Hope Jahren's Lab Girl, and I feel slightly bad saying that. Why? Well, she seems like a nice and is a successful person. She's gotten a ton of awards and accolades, and she's a pioneer as a woman and a human in her field, which has something to do with botany. But for me, this book was a fail. First of all, the nature writing parts were a snooze. And I'm not opposed to nature writing, because this book has some of it, and I ate that book with a spoon. But this is just ... I don't know? Clinical? Disconnected? Something? Speaking of disconnected, the narrative that is supposed to be the memoir part of this memoir and science writing book doesn't work. It's like a hundred pages of workaholism. Then, wait, she's bipolar or maybe manic-depression, I'm not even clear, and then it's back to work. And then she gets pregnant, and she ends up beating her head into a wall or something, and then thankfully for her when she gets to her third trimester she gets on anti-psychotic medication, and then back to business as usual. A lot of the book is her obsessed with her lab partner named Bill who is sort of tempestuous and rude. Which is fine, but maybe if she spent more of the book explaining anything she learned about herself or her mental state issues, I would've enjoyed it more. Instead, it's like pop a pill and move on to the next thing. I don't recommend it.

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Walk This Way

Nature walk #florida

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This Is Your Destiny

"This is your destiny," the caretaker at the gates of the columbarium said and pointed at the notepad in my hand 👉🏿📖💀 #fieldnotes #columbarium #death #caretaker #journalism #moleskine #notepads

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What I'm Also Reading

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What I'm Reading

💥💣📕

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I Give It a Meh

Over the years, I've owned several Mary Roach books, but I've never read them. This week, I finally got around to plowing through Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. People accuse Roach's books of being formulaic. One Word Title. Semi-Colon. An Odyssey Through Something Weird. In Which the Author Relates a Lot of Facts. And Cracks a Lot of Jokes. Titter. Titter. At first, I was dazzled. I mean, this book opens in a room with pans in which human heads are sitting. Impressive! And there are all kinds of strange and dismembered things along the way, as Roach undertakes to answer the question: What happens to dead human bodies, anyway? A lot, apparently. But even though Roach is a significant presence in the book, she is sort of like a shadow figure. I mean, you never really get why she's standing there watching a transplant surgeon pry a still-beating heart from a woman's brain-dead body. I suppose if you don't want your author in your story soup, that works just fine for you. But if you're going to show me a still beating heart, I think you should get me to understand why I should care. And I guess I know that I do, but I don't know why, and Roach never says if she does, or if she does, why. The closest thing to an explanation that I happened across is that her father was sixty-five when she was born. So maybe that explains her fascination with bodies and death. Who knows?

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Working for a Living

#porn convention 🌟

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As usual, I'm for hire.

Here are a few things I can help you do:

1. Develop your reality TV show ideas (I've worked on true crime, adventure, and miniseries)

2. Blog (TIME.com named me one of the best bloggers of the year in '08)

3. Write (I'm a journalist with bylines ranging from Harper's Bazaar to Salon to Variety)

4. Advertising (I've worked with Publicis Groupe and Weber Shandwick)

5. Consult (I've helped cast feature films and TV shows)

My LinkedIn is here. You can email me here.

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Recommend

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What I'm Reading

📘

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H Is for Read This Book

Gorgeous. Stunning. Sad and beautiful. Uplifting and deranged. Startlingly intense. A woman loses her father and trains a goshawk to hunt. It's literary, and sing-song-y, and brilliant. Thanks to Justin Cohen for telling me to read it a year ago. Why did it take me so long? Who knows. Read it for the sadness. Love it for the prose. This isn't a memoir. This is something else altogether.

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I Miss the 90s

Long time ago

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What I'm Reading

📙

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Brain on Fire

I really didn't care for this book. It's a fascinating story about a woman who suffers from what is unclear at first, but what it turns out to be is what twists and turns her mind into something else altogether.

The most interesting aspect of the book is that she cannot remember what happened when her mind went off the tracks for a month, and as a journalist she sets out to recreate and rediscover what happened to her.

But for some reason that episode remains unintegrated into the rest of the author's life, or so it seems. It's as if you spent several hundred pages reading a book in which the author skirts the subject, simply staring at it from far away, never reengaging it in a way that transforms her wholly. Perhaps this is the complication of the brain.

I certainly experienced a very minor version of this at one point in my life. And one thing I learned is that it's very difficult to be objective about a thing when the sick thing is the thing itself.

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The Difference Between Success and Failure Is Not Giving Up

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