Newsletter #1: The Creative Process
For a while now, I’ve been eager to launch this newsletter — to share inspiring ideas, philosophical musings, and insights that may enrich your life and spark creativity. So here we go — my raw thoughts delivered directly to your inbox!
Truth be told, I’ve been struggling and delaying this first newsletter for a few weeks now. Despite some inspiring ideas and motivational moments — whenever I thought about starting, my mind went blank.
That’s when I realized: how my own struggle offers a great starting point for us to explore a more universal challenge: The Creative Process
Who doesn’t know how hard it can be? We’ve all been there. The dreading blank canvas. The empty page or word document. Some call it the writer’s block, though it’s not a phenomenon that exclusively affects writers. It is present in any creative activity we can think of.
In our ideal imagination we may picture just sitting down when ever we want and go on for hours in a blissful experience of flow, creating the most magnificent work of art.
In most cases, this is far from our actual experience. But we can get close to it, when understanding how the creative process works and letting go of some limiting beliefs.
A few years ago, when I started focusing more on my creative journey, I faced this issue a lot. How do I create anything? How to go from nothing, to anything at all? And then from that anything, to something that seems meaningful to me, let alone others? I felt like I was starting at zero. I didn’t have any noteworthy formal training in “The Arts”, so how could I potentially work creatively? How could I come up with an interesting idea and have the discernment to decide which idea was worth pursuing?
But since I was curious to find out, I started there. I began to investigate The Creative Process. I’d ask every artist or creative person I came across these questions: What is their process? How do they come up with an idea? What tips would they give to a novice?
The answers I got were as diverse as the fields the artists were from: Spending time in nature, exploring inner worlds, consistent practice, an outlet for strong emotions, studying other artists, to name a few that I remember.
The Power of Curiosity
But after some time and being immersed deeper in my own journey, I began to see some underlying patterns or core principles emerge. One thing that many successful artists seem to have in common is this: An intense curiosity and obsession.
One musician I met while living on the Canary Islands told me he once became fascinated with traditional Indian musical scales called ragas — leading him on a decade-long journey to study Indian music and the Bansuri flute. Another friend of mine I met in Mexico told me about the immense inner worlds he is experiencing, with its peculiar inhabitants and aesthetics, that he is just investigating like a journalist.
So in a nutshell, The Creative Process can be summarized as this: pay attention to what deeply sparks your curiosity. And then start investigating and refining it. It is called a process because that’s what it is. There is no final result, but just artifacts that reflect the steps along the way.
It may start with some inspiration from the external world, like a flower, a sound, or a painting. It may also come from inner worlds, meditative or psychedelic experiences.
Whatever it is that fascinates us — pay attention and start to investigate it. It can be anything: a feeling, color, harmony, texture, movement. Once exploring it deeper, it will develop a life of its own.
Principles of The Creative Process
These are the some of the core principles I discovered, that can be applied to any creative work:
- Inspiration: Observing inner states, nature, other art/artists
- Initial idea: A principle that interests you. A movement, texture, sound, feeling. Follow your curiosity.
- Investigation: Create something simple with the idea. Research specific knowledge while doing so.
- Experiment: Explore different variations, synthesizing with older ideas. Be playful.
- Finalization: Bring everything together and create a coherent aesthetic & story.
Trust the Process
I’ve found another crucial element that is often overlooked. Especially in our modern, information-overloaded world. We tend to get distracted and overwhelmed by all the ideas out there. We start comparing ourselves with others and may adopt beliefs that we could never get there, never have such an original idea as they do. We get frustrated before we even started.
Guess what: Even the most successful artists have once been there at some point in their life. What they also did: They did not let themselves be constrained by their own judgment.
So here is a good mindset to overcome this: You don’t need any other justification other than your curiosity.
You don’t need the skill. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Others don’t have to like the result. Just keep exploring and refining what fascinates you — the rest will follow. Skill will come. Ideas will come. Quality will come.
Trust the process.
With this in mind, you can’t fail — you already succeeded. So let’s continue our creative journey together. I’m excited to see where our curiosity lead us in the next edition!
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