Steps In The Creative Process (Part 1)
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
Robert Fritz
in his book Creating (1991), places a large emphasis on the role
of love in creativity. This is not a mere cliché, but rather a deeper
look at the essence of the word. “In the creative process, love is
generative instead of simply responsive.” Love must come first. We
think of “falling” in love. Though we unconsciously accept the
notion that we “fell” in love, we actively engaged in a lot
of activity and thought to get there. There was rarely a complaint about
not getting enough sleep; energy was always available for the pursuit of
love.
There is a love/creativity connection. You love a thing before it exists.
You want it and desire it so much that you must create it. First, you become
an appreciator, appreciating the thing and the stimulus that caused it to
be created. By doing this you open yourself to the stimulus to create as
well. This love and appreciation translates into breaking down your barriers
to the actual creating of the thing for which you are actively developing
the love and appreciation for.
Fritz repeatedly cautions about regarding love as a passive thing, insisting
that love and appreciation must be cultivated, pursued and nurtured in order
to be a stimulus for your own creativity. We don’t want to just be
a better, more appreciative, loving audience, we want to be the filmmaker,
loving the film long before the first scene is ever filmed. This presents
great difficulty for certain types of people. Analyze yourself. If you have
trouble with the concept of loving a concept, an idea, you may be one of
those passive love people who must first find an object that stimulates
love, sort of “I have to see it to decide if it really ‘does
it’ for me?” You should be cautioned to analyze this in yourself.
“If you truly want to become a creative person, you must abandon what
is essentially a track of cowardice: wanting to see and judge another’s
efforts before applying your own.” Also, such a person usually becomes
merely imitative, mimicking the work of others rather than offering their
own truly unique and individual effort.
Once we have cleared ourselves on the concept of love and appreciation,
we must begin a self analysis to better understand what we love to do. Is
it your work? What do you care about? What are the motives? Hundreds of
highly successful people have been interviewed in various studies and invariably
it is revealed that they continue to work, despite their millions, from
the sheer enjoyment of it. Whether it’s doing the deal, making the
pitch, producing the product, reveling in the consumer appreciation…the
bottom line is that what they love is essentially the “creating”
of the thing, whether it’s advertising, marketing, investment banking,
real estate, music, or widgets. Even if they could make more money, say,
by opening a restaurant, they wouldn’t do it because they wouldn’t
love it.
Fritz outlines a creative process that is surprisingly similar to Hemholtz’s
original Incubation theory from the turn of the century. However, he has
added some practical expansions to the explanation so that it has value
as a tangible map for at least a particular tract of analyzing or beginning
to analyze and prepare oneself for greater creativity.
1. Conception. Begin with an idea. “I am going to write a novel.”
You now already know that 1) you are going to write, and 2) it is going
to be a novel, not a poem. More than that, you probably have a few standards,
morals or ideals about the subject that you want to include. What’s
your take on what makes a good novel? Is it character or plot driven? Is
it period-historic, contemporary fiction, or future fantasy? The point is
that there are assumptions there, in whatever you decide to create, so it
is essential to recognize them explicitly. Maybe you only want to experiment
as a writer, or experiment as a writer with some new form. It’s usually
better to have some idea, even if it is vague, about the end result, no
matter how spontaneous or improvisational you wish to be.
To use another example, perhaps you wish to start your own business. Why?
To have personal freedom? To invest yourself in your own project? To explore
new ideas you can’t explore within another setting? To say, “It’s
my dream,” isn’t specific enough. You must know yourself well
enough to know yourself. In other words, you can’t possibly succeed
at something new (or something old) and be happy and fulfilled unless you
have some notion of what’s driving you. In recognizing that factor,
you open yourself to a lot of new, creative explorations of possibilities
and ideas about how to accomplish this.
On a much smaller scale, perhaps you’re struggling with a problem
of communication breakdowns at work. You don’t want to own or redirect
the entire company, but you do want to creatively solve a problem that seems
to have you at an impasse. Again, begin with your conception and examine
your motives and your commitment by asking the same or the same questions.
If there has been friction, personal pressure or discomfort as a result
of the work situation, then there may be some need to completely clear the
emotional content before you are able to conscientiously begin a creative
process.
2. Vision. This indicates moving from the general notion toward a result.
In the interest of continuing with examples that might be considered both
mundane and aesthetic, we’ll look at creating a video and redecorating
your house. Say you’re creating a video for a product, or a teaching
video. How will it be used? In a store as part of a selling tact? In the
home as instructional, informational material? Or in conjunction with a
presentation, class or demonstration? What/who will the audience be? Does
it make more sense to be practical and emphatic or playful and associative?
These types of questions help to inspire a more fully realized vision of
the end result, and will allow for more creativity within the project itself.
It is a common misconception that creative vision is a vague, indefinite
“feeling” and that definition and focus limit creative vision.
They in fact enhance creativity by insuring that the effort and
creative energy are directed toward the end result and not frivolously employed
in areas where disciplined efforts serve better. Amateurs, or those without
training or experience in a particular field, may often have interesting
and worthwhile insights as a result of lacking any preconceptions about
how something is to work. At the same time, however, particularly in what
are considered “creative” endeavors such as the arts, this attitude
or approach interfered with true creativity by hindering necessary, merely
functional processes.
To move to the example of redecorating, again, a series of questions helps
to define and delineate the vision. Is it to be a specific and particular
room for a certain usage, or a general theme or motif? Is it a family dwelling
with children, a young couple or established professionals who entertain?
Is it a second home or vacation spot? Are there frequent visitors or family?
Such lines of questioning inevitably help one to plan and focus. Now that
it is established that we need a guest room which doubles as a study, we
can imagine the small sofa that pulls out into a bed, the need for certain
neutrality in colors and styles, and so on.
3. Current Reality. While most people immediately jump to “getting
there,” that is, to establishing the vision, the best actual action
is to establish what is currently present or available in relationship to
the result you want. This ongoing stage in the creative process is described
as a “tension,” the discrepancy between the reality and the
vision. The process along the way, but incepted at this stage, is to keep
one eye on where you are and one eye on where you want to be. (This ability,
incidentally, is abundantly developed in successful negotiators who do not
get bogged down in the emotional, stagnating issues at the table. Keeping
both images firmly fixed allows one to continually move toward that vision
of the end result.)
Interestingly, most of the major breakdowns in the creative process seem
to focus on one’s not being able to keep an undistorted awareness
on where the current reality is. A sense of distortion is usually present,
either fixing one in the past and unable to see the progress and present
position, or too firmly fixed on the end result and unable to maintain an
accurate assessment of the current reality. Either way leads to misfortune.
It should be noted that although the vision is fixed as an “end result,”
that vision may adapt and adjust without affecting the end result. The paint
may be blue instead of turquoise, and not affect the function of a study/guest
room, for instance. A popular form or memorandum may be kept with a few
adjustments that do not affect the outcome of communications efficiency
in the office. A scene in a script may be altered or even dropped in favor
of another expanded scene or even a single visual image that communicates
the overall objective of the idea more simply or more powerfully. The end
result is still the same in essence.
This discernment is important in that it affects, actually impairs, your
ability to act creatively toward your goal. You could not effectively travel
to Boston if you did not know where to start your journey. First, know where
you want to go. Then figure out how to get there from where you are.