Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Creativity

So if you follow me around the blogsphere, you already know I believe creativity is inherent in the bones. I think some people have more of it than other and obviously some people's creativity has a more marketable content, but it is what it is - either you have it or you don't. Kelly Parra recently had a blog about this very thing.

As writers we tend to only think of creativity in terms of art, or perhaps science if you watch educational television much. But what about other applications?

I was listening to my favorite radio show yesterday and they read a very interesting news story. They usually cover the big events and some small odd ones that listeners might find entertaining. This one definitely caught my attention.

Apparently, there is a new method for pairs of thieves to distract women from their wallets. They find mothers with babies in stores and the first thief walks up and tells her something like "that's a fat, ugly baby." The mother, of course, whirls around to defend her precious cargo and in the meantime, the second thief lifts her wallet out of the diaper bag and is gone.

Cruel, you say - well, maybe if the baby WAS fat and ugly. But ultimately, I think it's very, very creative. I mean, seriously, what other words could you utter to better distract a new mother than telling her that her offspring is less than perfect?

I know being robbed is not funny. My husband has gone that route and it's a royale pain, but I had to admire the cleverness of the ploy.

If only people with those kind of minds had the focus, discipline and talent to write books. Might be interesting reading.

4 comments:

Kelly (Lynn) Parra said...

Oooh, very bad thieves! But yes, very creative lol!

In fact the writer in me can't helps admire the idea for a book since I write a lot about criminals.

Yeah, if they put all this energy into books instead of crime imagine what kind of world we'd have. =D

Jana DeLeon said...

Kelly - you should SOOOOOO write that into a book! I would love it. I thought it was very clever. Not very nice, but very clever.

Anonymous said...

Jana, it is a creative line, but can they develop that idea and do something with it. They might have a chance with flash fiction, but I doubt they'd be able to stay creative through an entire novel.

What would they do if the mom just kept staring at the baby and said witha smile, "I know."

Probably something like:
"And...um...and he'll probably have to go to community college." And then they've got nothing. That's how they end up in a life of crime anyway.

Jana DeLeon said...

Hi kal, I don't know, I think if the woman didn't bite on the ugly baby thing that would make a great scene. Especially if you were writing comedy. Plus, you've got to figure they have other ideas besides this one. This is probably just the one they got caught with.

Or if you were writing a cop book, what a fun set of criminals to use for a subplot.

 
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