Karleen Koen and Nurturing Creativity

Karleen Koen is an established authoress of tales of historical fiction, one of which is on one of my favorite subjects, Louis XIV. Before Versailles is the title of the book. She also has a blog which I follow through email. Tonight she is discussing a speech she will be giving on nurturing creativity. It made me think of Shanley, a female who taught through Cal State LA a creative writing class in the suburbs of LA. Several faculty members and I were taking this class together at the time...she suggested that we place our germ of an idea in an egg, and place it in a spot located in the room to rest and incubate, and to come back to gather it up when it hatched. Funny thing about profs...we never forget the peculiar ones like she had been. She gave everyone an A simply for trying and submitting anything, good, bad, or indifferent. It ran contrary to most of our ideas of fairness but what the heck, one of my fellow faculty members actually submitted one of his student's works to see what she would do. She also gave us an experiment in which we were told to visualize a mirror, and then try to get through the mirror. That was our assignment...we had to tell what was on the other side of the mirror. In fact, it always works as to what most people see on the other side of the mirror. I won't give it away yet...but try it...what do you find on the other side of the mirror...see yourself go through it...tell us what you find...nearly all people come up with the same imagery...So what does Shanley have to do with Kathleen Koen? She made me remember her that quickly, and I am always impressed with ways to encourage imagination and creativity.