At last the moment you have been waiting for! You have had your grand idea. You’ve thought about it, played with it, and developed a plan of attack. Now it’s time to drag your idea kicking and screaming into this reality. This phase of the Creative Loop is where the rubber meets the road. All our hopes and desires come crashing into harsh reality right here. It is in the building phase that we make our ideas work by rolling up our sleeves and getting to work.
Your dreams began with you and with you they will become a reality. You are the main driving force behind your idea. I cannot stress this enough, if you want to build your idea, you will need to get your hands dirty. No one else is going to build your idea for you. Every day is an opportunity to inch closer to finishing your dream. We find the time to make things happen. Even if it is just a little tiny bit, it is still that much closer to completion. Every tiny scrap of progress should be cherished. Every step towards the goal is earned. This is probably what lead William Goldman to say “You have to protect your writing time. You have to protect it to the death.” Our time is short. Our time is valuable. Lets spend it doing the things we really want to be doing.
However just because we really desire something does not mean that it will be easy. Just because you might have written seventeen books does not mean that the next one will be a snap. Bringing forth our ideas will always challenge us. Be it finding a new chemistry compound or bringing your novel to life, each task is presented as a challenge. Creation is an experience that stretches us, one that teaches us. We have to choose to stick with it. We have to choose to pick up our creative instruments and do the best we can.
“In recent years, psychologists have studied the relationship between persistence and creative achievement. They’ve discovered that the ability to stick with it— the technical name for this trait is grit— is one of the most important predictors of success…Nobody is talented enough to not have to work hard, and that’s what grit allows you to do.”*
Now we’ve talked a great deal about perseverance and hard work here but lets not forget that during this phase you are in the very midst of creating something new. This is my favorite of the four steps of the Creative Loop. Not only am I making concrete progress towards my goals but I get to experience the wonder of imagination first hand. No matter how much planning we put into our ideas, no matter how meticulous the proposal, it won’t always align perfectly with reality. Sometimes we need to be creative to work around problems, to avoid further complications, or to simply keep the whole thing from going off the rails altogether. Sometimes we have to go off script.
Picasso once quipped “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” This is something that is a challenge for most of us. When we are children we create effortlessly. I made up stories and characters at the drop of a hat. Then I grew up and somehow lost touch with that. When I come upon a problem my immediate reaction is to try and force my way through it, blundering about like a bull in a china shop. This is usually deleted and I am left with the same problem as before. Then I stumbled upon something. If I just let it be, if I work on other things, either within the scene or further within the book I usually find a much more elegant answer to my problem. I learned to let go and let creativity take over. To play with my ideas. I learned to have fun with what I write. I learned to be a kid again.
The building phase will always be a challenge. It will test your ideas and your ability to make them a reality. Yet it is also a time of immense creativity. Bringing our ideas to life is never an easy task, sometimes it will be frustrating, sometimes it will be heart breaking. But it is always worthwhile, it is always a learning experience. Eventually in the end when you finally hold your dream in your hands. Words cannot express the joy, the relief, the overwhelming gratitude of such a moment. But this is not the end. No, your idea is like a newborn baby. Beautiful, whole, but with plenty of room for growth. It’s time to brave the choppy waters of refinement, it’s time to polish your work.
*Lehrer, Jonah (2012-03-19). Imagine: How Creativity Works (p. 233). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
(This post was originally published on Sept. 24th 2015)