Discussions of Creativity

[excerpted academic writing, Spring 2011]

I am glad for having read Csikszentmihalyi's [herein, Csik] dissection of the Creative Personality, but my knowledge of psychology warns against too quickly categorizing, or seeking to understand more fully, any individual who may hold contrasting beliefs, and their creative inclinations: the smart and simultaneously naïve, the responsible and simultaneously irresponsible, the “extroverted and introverted” (p. 65). Csik typifies creative individuals, and employs unfortunate labels of ‘bizzare’ and ‘normal’ thoughts, for lack of better classification. I am also hesitant to endorse Csik’s designations, as “genetic predisposition for a given domain” (p. 52) of creativity sours notions of interdisciplinarity: some of my creative heroes have made movies as well as music, performance as well as publication. Csik used Warhol as an example of how popularization of a specific artistic stance and disposition was employed on a larger and more public scale; I felt as though at times the narrative was asking of that “bizarre” artist, “hey, what’s with the soup cans?” Or of Lou Reed: why, after a platinum FM hit in the mid-1970s, release a four track work of nothing but noise (“Metal Machine Music”)? Or, of Frank Zappa: why did the epic “200 Motels” have to be a movie, and not just a long and disjointed album?

These choices reflect each individuals’ embrace of their craft, and their careful or careless choices. I agree with Jon [Ross]: an awareness of the world is essential. A larger understanding of one’s environment is enabling of creativity: its resources, its hazards, its strengths and weaknesses. Picasso’s studio contained much space, and allowed his pursuit of any and all media at hand. In my work, I feel raw material of every sort is important to keep on hand. Unlike Andrea [Scarpino], I don’t fear creativity at work for negative purposes: echoing a far-earlier post, I do agree with some divine nature of creativity, one that is unpredictable and cannot be categorized by any method.

And, I appreciate a definition of Positive Psychology toward this end: Nobel’s invention of dynamite, and his creation of a Peace Prize serve as one example of humanity’s constructive and creative and noble tendencies. Egyptians’ use of social networking (CNN tells me it’s called “liberation technology” now) is another good example of positive, unanticipated creativity. I like how Csik draws attention to an artist’s ability to be objective about their own work (p. 72), having the ability to discuss the products of their creativity, removed from moments of inspiration. This principle of self-criticism is important, fickle, dangerous (I don’t think Mubarak has publicly discussed the decision to shut down Internet communications?).

While Csik writes with a profound and prescriptive tone, I don’t feel empowered to any greater extent to assess another’s creative work—Kath’s question of “who judges” draws attention to the distinction between assessing a creative personality as an individual (and the choices, good or bad, therein), and assessing an individual’s creative works. “Who judges” (first and foremost, the artist/creative individual themselves?) and Faulker’s advice “kill your darlings” [cherished but useless work] combine to reinforce my original point: psychologically, the maintaining of opposing beliefs (extroversion and introversion) is dangerous ground, if not a rudimentary diagnosis of a problem.

Dylan Thomas is an example of one who may be read as literature, or as the bleak words of creative individuals, so ‘genetically predisposed’ to a “given domain” (p. 52) that he drank himself to death—which perhaps misses the point of his art having been created in the first place. I could stay mad at Yoko Ono, for having enabled John Lennon’s secretive heroin years in the Dakota in New York City, and I could ask big questions of how he, as a creative type, gave up to a new extent, producing only a fraction of the material of other Beatle alum. I heard songwriting guru speak a few years ago at Harvard, and he joked about how people ask him why it takes five years for him to write an album; he laughed as he said it takes him four-and-a-half years of doing nothing. From Abbey Road Studios to Ben Folds’ occupation of Elvis’ RCA Nashville studio, to the streets of Cairo to Zappa’s Studio Z, environment is key in understanding a creative personality’s process....

...my fear comes in Csik's categorization of behavioral trends that can happily oppose each other in an individual, and the result may be magical bursts of creativity. I like seeing a split of internal and external forces at work in an individual, over Csik's stuff like identifying "convergent" and "divergent" thinking, or thinking there's some knack to being both wise and childlike. It isn't that I disagree with Csik, but I would appreciate he be more outrightly psychological, as these personality types-- including those who willingly choose to alternate between fantasy and reality-- are diagnosable, if you buy into modern psych. Is Csik a behaviorist, a Jungian, or pontificating without acknowledging psych research into individuals holding opposing beliefs?

I'm guarded against establishing visions of a lofty sense of creativity: sometimes it's been the result of depression, of "convergent" and "divergent" ways of thinking meeting up and being explosive. There are no atheists, and no non-creative types, in a foxhole, I guess. My experience working in mental health and in elementary special education tells me that individuals who hold contrasting beliefs are as likely to tell you they're your friend and proceed to punch you in the nose as they are to paint you a picture to express themselves. I worked for a time with a banjo-based musician, and our tenuous relationship was based as much in his brilliant creativity as much as it was in his ever-faltering ability to trust a world he couldn't predict-- his art, however humble and scrawled, served as his response to that world, in place of his actually meeting and greeting the rest of us. My father brought canvases and paints to patients in a hospital mental ward in the mid-1970s; the best of these remain hanging on his walls because they're beautiful and brilliant, and born of another's attempt to express their experience using something other than verbal language.

It's this action-- the practice-- that defines the creative personality, for me: anyone who tries, from those wailing away in a non-audition community choruses to those locked in attics perfecting their visions and dreams, having their mothers bring them lunch and dinner in on a tray. It's hard work to ask anyone, including a creative type or an aspiring creative type, to be both "humble and proud" at the same time; like the craft itself, I think such humility takes conscious work, and practice. It may seem like I'm pushing for some big "the-soul-of-a-poet-is-mental-illness," but I'm surely not. What I do believe is that a truly transformative and experiential educational environment may, for students of any age, incite new perceptions of the world that are themselves creative-- and may, if an individual is so inclined, manifest in creative products, if not provide motivation to literally transform their environment by whatever creative means are accessible. Instead of paying to have it hauled away, my sister Jessica built a sculpture of old bike parts and mattress springs left in the woods; I have recently spray-painted it red, white, and blue.

Creative products are seeming secondary to our discussion's focus on Creativity as Applied Across Genres, so it becomes less useful to understand any grittier edge of the creative personality (for which Gardner's work, as cited by Csik, sounds great, and is likely more clinical). I'm on a quest to figure out more about why Dylan Thomas fell off his barstool, and what that says about Raging against the Dying of the Light. To answer this question, I need to know more than his propensity toward both extroversion and introversion, but-- ask any creative individual-- Why Do You Bother? The quote below, a response by Thomas in answer to a critic's inquiry about Freud's influence in his work, makes clear a deeper intention for a creative pursuit: something more important lies within:

"Whatever is hidden should be made naked. To be stripped of darkness is to be clean, to strip of darkness is to make clean. Poetry, recording the stripping of the individual darkness, must, inevitably, cast light upon what has been hidden for too long, and by doing, make clean the naked exposure. Freud cast light on a little of the darkness he had exposed. Benefiting by the sight of the light and the knowledge of the hidden darkness, poetry must drag further into the clean nakedness of light more even of the hidden causes than Freud could realize." (Thomas, as cited by Brinnin, p. 103)...

...Thomas Unger's essay “On Inspiration: Thomas Wolfe, Jorge Luis Borges, & Raymond Carver” goes far to establish, through examination of three modern authors, modes and practices of creativity and inspiration-- inspiration being the initial movement, the inciting action that brings forth creative writing and revision. This essay compares and tries to make general sense of how three male authors-- two white men and one Argentinian poet-- produced their original work during the twentieth century. Unger speaks with authority, and drops personal connections liberally; many MFA programs seek to use literature as a means of propulsion for creative writing curricula: using Unger's axiom “focus on craft does inspire” (p. 1) as a springboard for the practice of inventive written expression. While Unger's discussion of each author provides different insight on a creative process, some statements may apply to all those who pursue the building, making, designing and construction of art. Some big ideas to chew on:

• this essay is written to dispel notions that “poetic inspiration might be better left undiscussed” (p. 1); talking about the production of creative work informs all those who seek to be creative, regardless of artistic venues

• Thomas Wolfe's practice included his leaning over a refrigerator, and moving about Unger's grandmother's kitchen; Mann, on Wolfe: “under creative compulsion he was extraordinary” (p. 3).

• Borges' inspiration came at will (generally, when he closed his eyes), and his creative practice included a regimen of dictation, as well as socialization and regular meals; Unger describes Borges walking around rooms, bumbling around the distinction between this world and when “a kind of 'dreaming' came over him” (p. 8). Borges was pensive and thoughtful, delivered orations and edited the transcripts carefully; in this, Unger uses him to show that “impatience is the enemy of art” (p. 9).

• Raymond Carver provides an example that “poetic inspiration can be earned” (p. 13), and that not all creative processes are as methodical and strategic as Borges' eyes-closed visions and Wolfe's all-night kitchen-based writing jags. Carver, between poverty and alcoholism, struggles to write-- in basements, spare bedrooms, where ever, and with whatever resources were available. Carver's own essay on inspiration, “Fires,” is cited, for providing an example of a ringing telephone interruption in an individual's creative process: he ends up writing into the story he was working on the character on the other end of the phone. “'The telephone rings and your life changes,' Ray would say” (p. 12); moments of inspiration and creativity may reach us at unexpected times, and not necessarily within the finest circumstances.

To ask 'what creative practices do you have?' may seem too blunt a question in response to Unger's discussion of these authors-- though some of us seek to be creative writers, and some of us do not, thus the accessibility of this essay may challenge any singular prompt. Like Wolfe leaning over the fridge in the 1930s, what environmental conditions help your “creative compulsion” (Mann, as cited by Unger, p. 3)-- light, dark, public, private? Like Carver, and so many other writers, have you ever pursued creative work while living in poverty, or under less than perfect 'personal conditions?'...

...thanks for answering my prompt; I lived out of a vat of spare change, too, while working on a Masters. Times like that, of circumstances that may drive one closer to one's art, may offer us more definition than times of affluence. One winter around the turn of the century, an impoverished Picasso burned his paintings to stay warm (http://www.buzzle.com/articles/pablo-picasso-biography.html). If inspiration is not a mythical Tinkerbell-fairy that descends upon our shoulder, then some times and places of our lives might be more useful than others in understanding how and why we're creative, and inspired-- what times were more formative than others, in being inspired? What semesters or classes have been more inspiring than others?

A step further: I heard one of us say during the residency, "I don't like to go to long without meeting my needs-- food, water, sex, a beer..." Of the three writers discussed in the article, maybe only Carver is seen as going without meeting his own needs: did transience and alcoholism feed Carver's process, or did Carver's process bring about these less-than-sustainable choices? Or are these choices fully separate from the creative process? Of the three, Borges' form of inspiration may be the safest, healthwise-- bumbling into walls and rooms due to distraction by eyes-closed visions probably isn't as bad for the body as Wolfe's all-night kitchen chain smoking, and not as bad as Carver's struggle with sobriety. I'll admit I don't pay as much attention to my physical needs when rapt in projects, choosing coffee and grapes over breakfast, and chips and hummus over dinner. One substance I spent my vat of loose change on, and became essential to all-night poetry jags, is Moxie, the original soft drink. Its mix of gentian root and anisette creates a licorice-flavored pop that holds magical powers-- for me, there can be a poem in every serving.

This self-moderation in support of inspiration can go too far, leading to anything from artificial writers' block to untimely demise-- as Dylan Thomas rages against the dying of the light and falls off his barstool. If we make careful choices, our inspiration may still fall prey to external circumstance, from unexpected heartbreak to the combustion of our computers, finding ourselves in worlds that require us to hide our typewriters beneath floorboards, or to burn our paintings for heat. Inspired by Charlie Sheen's irrational and wild media blitz last week, and his rambling about "tiger blood" and "winning," I picked up Borges' seminal collection of poems, "Dreamtigers" (1964). As described in Unger, Borges' fascination is consistently with the limitations of our perceptions, and our ability to act upon what we are able to see. In piece that gives the collection its title, Borges uses "the tiger" as a metaphor for his inspiration:

"[...] Childhood passed away, and the tigers and my passion for them grew old, but they are still in my dreams. At that submerged or chaotic level they keep prevailing. And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I think: This is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; and now that I have unlimited power, I am going to cause a tiger. Oh, incompetence! Never can my dreams engender the wild beast I long for. The tiger indeed appears, but stuffed or flimsy, or with impure variations of shape, or of an implausible size, or all too fleeting, or with a touch of the dog or the bird" (p. 25)....

...The language regarding the production of creative work might be collapsing; a professor of English begrudges the collapse of vocabulary both among Freshman Comp populations and professional individuals: new constructions of technological expression only aid “verbage spewing” that is itself “garbage.” Teachers of language arts are left swimming upstream against a tide of shortening, quickening, and twittering, old patterns of linguistics that probably help students understand less in the classroom than ever before. And thus, is the distinction between “inspiration” and “creativity” such 'verbage-spewing?' Literally, these are both nouns-- notions-- and may both, in this language, be changed into descriptive terms, “inspired” and “creative.” None of the authors mentioned in Unger seem 'inspired' but NOT 'creative,' or 'creative' but not 'inspired.' Maybe there is a place in which one may sit on a couch and claim to be “creative,” but “uninspired,” but would this look like laziness?

Perhaps the state of creativity is a light-switch: an individual with creative potential (all of us) becomes “inspired,” seeking to react and make sense of the world they perceive. To me, this action is solitary and complete when one hands someone a product....

...I share your concern about poets who don't choose to reveal their process, only their finished work-- but I can't characterize such secrecy as immediately elitist. And, I'm glad Unger answered your concerns directly in his introduction: it is, to be sure, discussion of the creative process that gave rise to, and has kept afloat, many an MFA-in-creative-writing program ("many of these are cheap, or even free" joked Annie Dillard once, in an essay addressed to college students). By nature, creative pursuit (of the kind discussed in Unger, via the examples of Wolfe, Borges and Carver) might be voluntary; while writers seek to fulfill deadlines set by publishers, and creative types like Tharp work towards production dates, the literal presence of their work is what they're paid for, and maybe their creative choices-- autonomous, un-ownable, reside in a different place. What authors are you thinking of, that keep close and secret their creative process?

For a while during the last decade, writing "manuals" of many types were in fashion, to be found in places like suburban Borders and Barnes and Noble stores, to be bought by people like my mother: a nurse of nearly forty years, whose metaphorical "garden" might be her collection of Elvis stuff, including songbooks, pictures, figurines and the like. These writing "manuals" included both how-to-write instructional guides as well as a slew of 'on writing' tomes from famous authors; commercial success of works like Stephen King's own nonfiction account of his process helped define a genre that supports work like Tharp's bestselling guide. The snottiest of authors or artists I know or have known, the ones who have or do keep their inspirational and creative cards close to their chest, I find are usually doing so because they seek attention to be paid to their work itself: true or not, I've been in a few discussions in which 'writing-about-writing' was dismissed as less useful and poignant than writing itself. I can-- I must-- respect artists who may choose to remain "elitist," and not to disclose the sources or methods behind their work, for it is through an audience's consumption of the art itself by which such an artist is seeking to be understood.

In this, I believe a healthy dose of "idol worship" may bring one closer to any individual or group's creative productions: having all the albums from a favorite band, or owning a poet's collected works are examples of perhaps a milder form of what you're describing. I believe there's nothing wrong with young writers liking old writers, or for one to follow the other around, even. In "waving the wand" (p. 10), Tess Gallagher (Raymond Carver's longtime partner, y'know!) may be speaking of what anxious crowds of MFA students seek: a sudden, and fairytale story of useful inspiration. In most of these writers, a regimen of diligent work seems to drive both creativity and inspiration...

...one with a poet's eye may be inundated by the “complete and utter chaos” at hand. I wish I could agree; I wish I could better keep at bay this 'chaos,' but the older I get the less able I become. This program acknowledges this regimen by declaring Fridays unfettered by assignment, a day during which we may pursue creative projects without being encumbered by our academics. I wish I had such a distinct handle on my perception, and could turn off my emotional, visceral, political and overarchingly creative responses to the bombardment of information and stimuli alive in my world; some days, I have so much to say, am so compelled that I cannot truly acknowledge the task at hand, and instead must deliberate through creative pursuit.

Lately, I've been increasingly wary of the revolutions in the Middle East; besides prayer, I have been writing/compiling an ode to Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian who set himself on fire weeks ago (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2043557,00.html), and whose choices have been said to have initiated public protest on a larger scale. Because, what if he were to be viewing the Iranian warships moving through the Suez Canal; what if he were to hear Gaddafi's call for peace, and his own continued leadership? My creativity has led me to ponder: if Bouazizi is able to see any of these actions taking place now, after his demise, I believe he is likely to see beyond our sense of chronology, and is able to see the sum of these individual revolutions, and perhaps the outcome itself.

As I flit about between jobs, work and life, fulfilling obligations and having experiences that are altogether enjoyable and relevant to me, too often I am reminded of the lyrics and narrative break in the middle of They Might Be Giants' song “Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head,” appearing on the debut album, and offering insight into their creative process: “memo to myself: do the dumb things I gotta do/touch the puppet head”. It's a damn silly metaphor-- the touching of a puppet head as being itself a the construction of a creative 'leap,' perhaps, as described by Bly-- but is one that characterizes the creative process as being tied essentially and necessarily to experiences in life.

As your body floats down Third Street

with the burn-smell factory closing up

yes it's sad to say you will romanticize

all the things you've known before

it was not not not so great...

and as you take a bath in that beaten path

there's a pounding at the door

well it's a mighty zombie talking of some love and posterity

he says “the good old days never say good-bye

if you keep this in your mind:

you need some lo-lo-loving arms

you need some lo-lo-loving arms

and as you fall from grace the only words you say are

put your hand inside the puppet head...

“Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head,” They Might Be Giants, retrieved from http://vimeo.com/7725950

...creative interdisciplinarianism, which is released by poetry, music, and almost all manner of creative pursuit outside of one's modern means of 'making a living', includes the fabrication of new words, instruments, and application of existing resources in new ways. If individuals on a grand scale were released from such narrow vocational and recreational practices, Murdoch's control of the media might be only one of the casualties: “If engineers and scientists could publish learned articles on the future of music, what would happen if a professional musician acquired the tools of an engineer-- actually became an engineer? What kind of music would that produce?” (Edwards, p. 23). And, what type of building might get made? I think often of the archetypical 'Renaissance Man,' at least the characteristic that sought capabilities and proficiencies across an array of physical and artistic venues-- not out of compassion, but perhaps curiosity or general interest...

...sporadic moments of mystical creative magic seldom happen, to an extent that those moments help make available a new, full, finished product-- for me. Kerouac's "On The Road" was not the result of diligent journalism, but a result of long days at a typewriter, equipped on unending scrolls of paper; Ginsberg's early and ample revisions of "Howl" have been repackaged and republished; Dylan's legendary demos were finally officially released this summer, and one may be impressed by Bob's earliest acoustic guitar chops, if nothing else-- each of these were the result of practice, and practice that took place prior to the inception of any specific creative project. Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett's series of live, improvised European concerts ("The Koln Concert" is regarded as the most notable of these) serves as an example of on-the-spot, influenced-by-the-present-tense and present-environment creative work: the art produced represents a practiced musician sharing his craft, and making public use of his practice...

...while I recognize the creative choices inherent in altering written expression to make a rhetorical statement, I believe a clear line between proper and improper syntax, grammar, and spelling is essential, if doctoral programs and education itself shall continue. I agree that the “appropriation of provocative words like “fuck” and “cunt”” aid in proving a larger rhetorical point, but the example at hand is the use and repetition of existing and specific words. The intentional manipulation of language is another discussion, and one that presents a host of contexts, from the academic to the conventional, including the name of a music festival. In my view, poetry is the appropriate realm in which to indulge subversions of our conventions of language, lest we all start writing in our own useless jabber. The spelling of womyn with a 'y' and other distortions of what we're all supposed to know as our common language proves a point, but-- ya gotta admit-- may be more confusing or distracting than immediately useful...

...thanks for citing some real-world creativity, from Spock to Bob "happy little clouds" Ross. Can an artist create art without themselves having the "benefit" (yuk yuk) of a tragic experience? Have I ever met anyone who hadn't had an experience that they had come to view as tragic? If I followed along to those cool public television instructional oil painting programs (I don't have TV; does stuff like that still exist?), and came out with hideously different than Bob Ross' version, was the product any less valuable? There is a weird and slippery slope to all of this "evil" creativity, and the ability of any individual to create products, goods, services or institutions that are detrimental to civilization: and how could we have stopped there? The effective pro-life billboard discussed earlier in this thread makes me glad for our freedom of speech-- and that there are still brains to make use of such rights-- over deducing where the creative intentions of the offensive billboard's designers fall, on a "positive" and "negative" spectrum.

I’ve got little response to this week’s readings, as I feel they purport a classification of personality and human behavior that, however valid, stands as separate-and-assumed-equal from the whole of formal psychology. Karen cited this quote, from James and Taylor (p. 41): “negative creativity may be driven primarily not by negative affect toward others but by excessively positive affect (e.g., narcissism or grandiosity) toward self.” I’ve met creative extroverts and introverts, and many have sought and/or continue to seek professional mental health services, and willingly admit and compare their diagnoses. I don’t know why the formal study of creativity seems to insist on residing fully outside of the standard texts and references of psychology? Outside of the box we built, I find myself wondering what purely Positive creativity, or, even more challenging, Neutral creativity might look like. If Einstein regretted his research that has led to this terrible new nuclear age—that’s still Einstein’s business, the acts of an individual and their effects. What’s our retroactive wag of the “negative creativity” at Einstein’s work supposed to accomplish, as meltdowns continue? Is there something about creative pursuit that “increases the prospect for damage,” Andrea asked? There is something about Living Life that does such, I think; some are blessed with creative gifts as well. Live Long and Prosper...

...the argument against the repression of all creativity, in the name of its potential negativity, is a weak one: prove it or not, but good luck. Einstein types will fail to be locksmiths, and their research will lead them to discoveries they didn't forsee the ramifications of, like Zuckerberg, and his brain-child Facebook. My faith enters as my strongest argument regarding the dismissal of creativity's negative ramifications: that Hitler types may stick to painting, and a higher power directs individuals' creative choices toward the improvement and sustainability of humanity (creative solutions to plugging an unknown leak in a nuclear reactor, anyone?). The opportunities each of us encounter to exert our creativity, and discover and invent what may not have been thought of before, cannot I believe be rendered or forecast by any scholar or body of knowledge as 'positive' or 'negative,' and to do so is a useless presumption. How are we do dismiss negative ramifications of creativity? Prayer; also, music.

Andrea said: "many more people have OCD or bipolar disorder or frontal lobe seizures who don't produce great works of art than who have those illnesses and do." What's fascinating to me most about mental health is that we don't know the common, collective quality of our frontal lobes; in all this high-falootin' cognition on creativity, it's mostly dealt with trying to understand the organ of the human body we understand the very least, the one that, if any, contains the magic, or at least very certainly real electricity. Is creativity-- good, bad, indifferent-- the occasional, perhaps-trainable, spilling and mixing of cerebral fluids, a cranial chemistry set with a spectrum of abilities and responses?

Much of what we know of the brain is about regulating: the emotions, the nerves, the process of perception. What we don't know as much about is the brain's ability to abstract, to draw illogical conclusions, to act out against logical norms. Sometimes, this can be great art; sometimes, this can produce madness, or at the very least, a summer spent on Phish tour. It's absolutely tiring and repressive-- to ME, and my ability to have fun and get shit done-- to look into any given individual and see anything but the potential for incredible, unprecedented good works. Of course, knowledge is constructed in interpersonal relationships, and conclusions are drawn. But any conclusions as to patterns of individuals and their creative abilities-- including the mentally ill, the lovestruck, or worse-- are useless, and get in the way of my own creativity, at the very least. Creatively, I turned it into a joke: If Cropley walked into our Threaded Discussion/a bar and declared all creativity negative and should immediately be repressed I'd post a Youtube link of Bob Ross/the bartender would immediately invent a drink called the Cropley...

Brinnin, J., ed. (1960). A Casebook on Dylan Thomas. New York: Thomas Crowell.

Cropley, D., Cropley, A. and Kaufman, J. and Runco, M., eds. (2010). The Dark Side of Creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and The Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Perennial.

Dawson, E. (2007). Big-Eyed Afraid. Baltimore: The Waywiser Press.

Edwards, D. (2008). Artscience: Creativity in the post-Google Generation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. Print.

Ross, B. (2011). YouTube. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MghiBW3r65M&feature=related

Unger, D. (2011). “On Inspiration: Thomas Wolfe, Jorge Luis Borges, and Raymond Carver.” Retrieved from tui.edu