Tuesday's Inspiration -- Courage and Creativity

When I read the segment on the kinds of courage my head sent me in perhaps a different direction that Rollo May meant. That's one of the beautire of these inspired thoughts. Let's look at the kinds of courage he speaks about.

Physical courage, moral courage, social courage and creative courage.

The first is easy to see and to use in a book. Physical courage has two faces and one of those faces can lead to bullying. The other to transcending what is happening to a person. Writers can use both in their own lives and also in their books. Think of a hero or heroine with a physical disability and where this can lead. Also consider a character who uses the physical to harm others. This can give a hero or heroine a chance to shine or to cave in.

Moral courage is harder to define but can really make a character stand out. The unwillingness to view violence as being just is one form of moral courage. A character than can't or won't bend, one who values others just because they are human might be a hard character to put into a book but this might be worth it to the writer to explore. The opposite side of moral courage would be the character who "blew with the wind" changing moment to moment and allowing anything to sway their opinion. Think of the stories either of these characters could spur.

Social courage means relating to others. An apathetic character would be the opposite. But social courage could be carried too far and a character could become such a humming bird flitting through life without making a real impact. The apathetic character could become a hermit having mo interaction with others. Both characters could make for an interesting story.

Creative courage is the fourth spoken about in this segment of the book. Mr. May believes finding new symbols and new patterns but I think there is more. Finding what symbols matter to the writer is important. I never realized until I thought about this how many symbols are contained in the stories I write. Have I found new ways of expressing the things I write about, I don't know. I do know that I have broken what is considered the formula for certain genres several times and though the stories were liked by editors they couldn't accept the stepping from the path I chose to take. Mysteries that were more about exploring relationship of people before the murder was committed, romances that didn't fit the pattern. What I found was writing for electronic publishers gave me a way to express the stories in my own fashion. Deciding to publish with electronic publishers I think was a step in courage, a new way of producing books. Now everyone seems to feel this way. Makes one wonder what's next.