The Creativity Quest
Day 24 of 31: 200 Words-A-Day Challenge
Our 31-day challenge is quickly drawing to a close. If you haven’t participated yet, it’s not too late. Jump in now. Below my micro-essay, after which you’ll find a prompt. Write to it or use it as inspiration. JUST WRITE! Then share what you’ve written in the comments below or via Notes. That’s the real challenge of this challenge: getting accustomed to sharing. If I can do it, you can too!
The Creativity Quest
We tend to treat the creative process as magical and mysterious. Each writer, artist, performer appears to experience it in their own way, which is true to a degree, but there are some major commonalities which I’ve attempted to capture in a framework I call The Creativity Quest.
As an editor and a creativity coach, I’ve documented my observations about the winding journey that is the creative process. I’ve managed to distill The Creativity Quest into ten discrete stages. Over time, as I’ve continued observing writers—and myself—I’ve refined the language describing each stage. I’ve gathered examples and scenarios to illustrate each stage, as well as tools, exercises, and other resources to help creatives keep moving on their quest.
It’s still a WIP. It’s not a perfect framework. It’s probably not the whole truth either.
But my hope is that it gives a foundation from which writers can begin to understand their varied creative experiences—both the challenging aspects and the ones they navigate with grace and ease. Truth is, I needed to create The Creativity Quest to understand my own journey.
As artists in every discipline know, the creative process is neither linear nor cyclical. We repeat stages. We can inhabit several stages simultaneously, being in one stage for a given project and in a different stage for another, which can get mind-bendy if you’re one who’s always creating multiple projects at once.
It’s exactly as twisty as it sounds! And I love being immersed in it with you.
Your Prompt / Day 24 of 31
Reflect on your creative journey thus far, specifically in regard to your writing. What (or when) have been the most challenging points? What else was going on in your life at the time? What (or when) were the most rewarding or satisfying points? What was going on in your life then? Describe the major milestones on your journey so far. (Remember, it’s not over yet.)
I talk more about The Creativity Quest in a series of episodes on the Around the Writer’s Table podcast, beginning with Episode 18. Let me know if you listen.
Not 200 words, but -
I learned a foundational lesson in creativity when I designed my first stage set. It was a lab show at UT. Zero budget. I could scrounge some used flats and decking from the warehouse, but that was all I had to work with.
The play was about a superman-like hero. Of course, it took place in his “cave”.
Hmmmm, what to do?
I had my Knoxville grandmother and all her friends save up their Sunday papers for me. Then I created “cave walls” with bunched and bulked up newspapers attached to the old flats. Then papier-mached the funnies over the top. There’s a photo somewhere…
A hundred low-budget sets later and I’ve never forgotten the lesson of the first one:
Necessity is the Mother of Creativity.