I sat down to talk to one of my coworkers on Tuesday to take a look at something he had made. He is taking classes on stone carving and was explaining what he had just finished in class. Through that initial class he produced a wonderful little statue that he is very proud of. Then he did something that made me smile. He said “Teller, just you wait man. I got me another piece of alabaster and I know exactly what I’m gonna do with it.” It made me smile. This is something I see all the time, not just in my own work but in all of my friends who are pursuing creative tasks. At the end of the day, after all the hard work and effort of bringing our dreams to life, we want to do it again!
The Creative Loop is more than just a nice idea. It is how we create. It is how we think. It is something that can be applied to a small idea or a large project. It doesn’t matter what it is, the Loop is still there. Its phases can be very broad or incredibly focused. Some steps are very quick, other tasks take longer, but the journey is the same for everyone. You have an idea, you make sure it’s sound, then you act on that idea and then you work on perfecting it. These four phases shift to suit your needs. Need to incubate an idea? Then spend more time meditating and thinking in the Inception phase. Need to make sure your idea is even feasible? Then its onto the Structure stage. You get the idea. No matter what we want to do, the Creative Loop can help us do it.
But wait there’s more! Did you also notice that the Loop is scalable? It serves our purposes in every decision we make. I noticed this as I was writing my last book. I had gone through all the steps up to the Building phase. I was building my book, chapter by chapter and yet I noticed something neat. I was doing a smaller version of the Creative Loop with each chapter. You see a book is like a big jigsaw puzzle, except you only have an idea of what it is supposed to be and how the pieces fit. The writers job is to make those pieces not only fit, but to hide the lines so you (the reader) can’t see the pieces. Every time I wrote a new chapter my brain decided what should happen. Then I asked how it fit with the rest of the story, I wrote it and wet back and polished up the rough sections. A nice, neat mini Creative Loop.
What amazes me the most about the Creative Loop is that it never stops. When I finish a book I have two or three new ideas to play with. Just like my sculptor friend, I am eager to begin the process all over again with a new blank page. Sure I might not know exactly what my next book will be, but I know eventually I will hit on a new idea and take off with it. Maybe it’s an older project that’s been set aside, maybe it’s a brand new idea that flies off the fingertips. This concept excites me. This untapped potential of humanity, this allure of the unknown future. The chance to make something totally brand new is something that should excite us. The point is that most of us won’t do just one creative thing in our lives. We will do several!
Next week will begin my Road to NaNoWriMo series of posts in which we will look at three things you should consider before delving into Novembers NaNoWriMo challenge, namley your stories setting, characters and plot. Then November will hit and the Creative Loop will be in full effect. I will be writing my brain out trying to reach the end goal. And then when the dust settles I am sure I will have generated many more novel ideas to work on. The Loop only ends if you allow it too. Pick up your dreams and follow them, you never know just where it will take you.