For me, incubation is the most important part of the process, but it takes so much patience. I force myself to set aside time in which I'm not writing. But then, of course, it looks like I'm doing nothing.
I have often gone into long periods when my creativity soars and time again when it's dry, dense not a new thought or idea. During both those times I write all my ideas down. Yes it seems as if one is doing nothing but day dreaming but it is an important part of the process.
I return to these ideas time and time again to reconnect and to see whether it is the time to implement them but I cannot use them so the ideas remain in the incubator. I will one day.
I once went to a writers conference where Ray Bradberry spoke. He said he put book titles and story titles/ideas down in a notebook and then forgot about them. He called it his garden where the fertile seeds grew into something. So I have a book of seeds and some of them really have grown. (Some are just taking up space, but it's a small space.)
I don't know that I can so clearly cage various facets of what develops into my works.
Admittedly, there's times when an idea sprouts for a story and I'm not able to stop and take to a keyboard right then and there. But if I am really "jazzed" about something that pops into mind, I won't lose it if I don't write it down.
For me, trying to catagorize the various stages of creation is like trying to reduce the Mona Lisa to a numerical equation. As if someone could simply employ the same formula and end up with a masterpiece.
Primary tools for me are inspiration, imagination, envisination, elucidation and elocution. Put that array of hues on your palatte and daub your cranial brush as you see fit.
posted by Arcade
about 1 year ago
My creativity came back to me when I stopped caring about it so much. It's like a spoiled child. As soon as I set out in a different direction, it starts bawling for attention. Pay it too much attention and it pouts and demands to be left alone.
view linkAnother view on the creative process. A talk by Elizabeth Gilbert about nurturing creativity.
My creativity just seems to pop when somebody pushes it on me otherwise it lays dormant. So I sometimes sit and stare at my computer until I see something that I like and it starts my juices flowing or, I remember something in my past and feel it should be placed on paper for posterity. But it's very hard for me to continue because of so many interruptions that I get sometimes. I feel I should lock myself in a room without a phone or television and yet sometimes I feel that I can't continue if that TV isn't in the background. It seems yo keep me focused on what I'm writing. It's the jabber of it that tells me to keep going. Does that make sense??
I have been waking up in the middle of the night
and feel compelled to sit here and write until I drop
or finish a poem and haven't a thought in my consciouness when I start.
The inner voice says: Write Karen and I do.
