Imagining Your Process
How would you describe or visualize creative work?
If you’re stuck or frustrated, if your process is not working, trying to name how-you-see-the-work might help you figure out why.
Do you imagine the task of creating to be:
running a marathon?
putting together a puzzle?
chipping away at a block of marble?
doing a scientific experiment?
taking a journey to a place you don’t know?
mining in a dark tunnel?
There is no right answer. It’s just a way to help you think about:
- What do I enjoy about this process?
- What parts of it are hard for me, and why?
- What does it, specifically, require to get it done?
If you’re “mining in a tunnel,” you have to get used to uncertainty, and shore up your work as you go. If it’s a puzzle, you may need to sort out the pieces without judgment, or figure out what the “edges” are and do them first. If it’s an experiment, you reason out the steps and stick to the plan so you can see what happens.
This lightweight mind-game can give you some things to try when you’re stuck or lost, or just get you out of a rut and see your process with fresh eyes.
The main thing to get from this is: creating is a PROCESS. Processes are made of steps & methods & phases, techniques & mechanics & tools. It’s not something mysterious and out of your reach. It’s running or polishing or sorting...with words.
You can do that.
For me it's like building a house. outline = blueprint; bricks, wood = first draft, raw prose; cables, drywall, plumbing = things start working; and so on. Until it's finally time to move in (publish).
I stay very close to my outline, so usually there aren't new rooms or stairs suddenly appearing. 😅
Oddly enough, my working process can be described as interpreting someone else's story. Yeah, I think that's a pretty boring description. But there are fine details and intricacies that fits the description very beautifully.
First of all, whose story am I telling? Is it the main character? The antagonist? The supporting character? The universe they reside in? My own under a cracked rosy tint? Well, it's pretty much all of them at the same time.
So the first thing I do is to know them. Who they are and how they interact with each other. The outlining process is kinda similar to preliminary research, gathering all the easily obtainable information and sorting them out into something versatile.
Of course the outline won't be complete without knowing their interactions. And interactions only happens when I actually start writing the draft like a series of interviews and careful observations. This is where the meat of information actually resides in. Whatever secrets they've been keeping from me will usually be revealed on this part.
Finally, there's the reviewing and editing part - the questionnaire I hand out to the story and characters, asking them about the current state of the script and how true they are to their actual experience.
I like how horrible and chaotic the description of my writing process is. It's brutally honest to the experience I'm going through every day. The 200 words a day I manage to scrape by doesn't feel like such an underachievement when I have to moonsault and cartwheel through those rings of fire to produce my art. It screams "I'm doing my best despite my many limitations" and I love it. I just love it.