For some of us, creativity is our life blood. We love to make things, better things. And for each of us, that creative energy and action is imperfect, so as we move to a create we meet with obstacles along the way. Like magnets, creative people tend to find each other and admire each other's creativity. We tend to examine and analyze as well as marvel at each other's craft.
I know creative people who create beautiful settings, play wonderful music, illustrate magical drawings, and write with flair. Some shower us with their creativity and others' creativity is quiet and often hidden. Over the years I've been analyzing my own creativity too. As an educator, I recognized that creativity and making often takes on an upside down bell curve or valley shape--there's the wonder and excitement at the start, and then just past the center of the work, there's a bottoming out--a hopelessness that the vision you had for the creative endeavor will never reach fruition, and if you can work through the bottoming-out stage, you usually climb back up to an adequate or better end.
As I analyzed my own creative path, I noticed wonderful positives and not-so-positive moments in the process.
Vision making
I love to imagine, so the only problem with the vision stage is that it's often grand, perhaps too grand. It's easy for me to see possibility without any pragmatism or constraints. This creates wonderful, but sometimes unattainable, vision.
The plan
I typically use backwards design with any plan, and that works well. I also like to map out that design with detail in words and images. I share the plan with others too which serves to give me supporters and holds me to the task. This works
Confidence and commitment
This is the toughest part of creativity for me--often about midway, I lose confidence in a project. This is when I get a bit whiny and I share my worries too much. This is where I have to improve with regard to creativity because this whiny, unconfident stage when shared too much results in mistrust, lost support, and general wariness about the project in general. Since many are far more pragmatic than me, they have a hard time imagining what I can imagine, and if I begin to lose confidence, they readily pull back and provide less or no support.
Reflection and revision
I love analyzing a project's many steps, and I readily revise as needed--this works.
Project share
Typically by the end of a creative endeavor, I'm weary, perhaps too weary. I often have little energy at the end, and thus I'm not as present as I should be during the project's reveal. This is an area for improvement too. Perhaps, the reveal or culmination of any project should be scheduld a week or more ahead of the actual project completion, thus providing time to prepare for the project reveal and celebration.
For me, creativity brings life meaning and joy. My creative friends feel the same way, and in the year ahead, I have many projects which I'll engage in, and as I engage, I'll try to shore up the weak points in my creative process. I also look forward to learning more about the creative process of others. Onward.