What's your creative process?

This beautiful scene made me wonder...what would happen if a car flew off this cliff? Wait for Black Jasmine to find out!

The creative process is a little different for everyone, sure.

For me, it’s connected to daydreaming, and then making and doing stuff.

Yeah, I know. Real scientific.

I'm in week three of my New Life with mornings free to write, and afternoons doing my therapy private practice. When I'm not freaking out from anxiety about NOT WORKING ENOUGH, I'm creating.

Mulling, wandering, chewing a bit of grass as I kick a pebble on my walk with my (small/fuzzy/ridiculous) dogs, and I think of a new scene.

Tilting my head to spot a flamenco dancer in the shape of a cloud. I take an Istagram pic of it (find me at tobyneal0)!

Chasing the aforementioned dogs away from a mysterious dirt patch in the middle of the ball field just the size of a body, I see a future crime scene for a novel.

Dreaming of other lives connected to all the woulda-coulda-shouldas of my own life, a never-ending branch of dimensional worlds connected to choices that may or may not be realities—I jot a poem.

It’s pretty bad, but there’s a germ of something there.

Creativity is connected to that glimmer, that flash, the ink of an idea spreading through the water of consciousness and tinting it something new. Writing is escape for me, and distraction, and renewal on so many levels, but in addition creativity’s been expressed in my life by spinning beads out of the hot honey of molten glass. Stitching beadwork so tiny and intricate it makes my eyes ache to look at it. Then, twisting and stringing jewelry out of all the elements I created separately.

Crochet is renewing, a mindless dance of a hook among threads. My brain really floats with crochet. (If only anyone wanted all those damn scarves and hats I’ve made here in Hawaii!)

Painting: another passion that rears its head periodically with a longing for the brush, the  smell of the paint, the seductive blobs of color like molten jewels.

Gardening: creating a feast for the senses with God’s help.

Dance: expressing stories within me through movement.

Working with children—playing, laughing, creating, crying, telling the stories of wounds and fear and ferris wheels too.

Creativity is not a finite supply of ideas. It’s a natural state of being in which one medium sparks another, one practice ignites another, an actual flow that is unending if you keep moving with it and allowing it to move through you. Today, think of one little fun, creative thing to do. No agenda. No potential sale. Just fun.

Fun ignites passion, and passion creates great work.

Give yourself permission to just have a little fun and see what happens.

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