I had an inspiring comic book artist address my Thinking Creatively class this week. One of the most valuable things he said was that his creative process (from idea to story) allows a lot of room to lose the way, and surprise himself with solutions. I loved that he was so comfortable with being lost.
He said he rarely plots ahead, but simply startings drawing the next frame and waits to see what happens. As he put it: those times when your hand knows what to do even though your head doesn’t.
Some of the most invigorating moments are those in which you surprise even yourself – when you start to feel like the thing you’re creating is no longer “you” but bigger than you. I think we’ve all experienced the exhilaration of seeing phrases / characters / scenes jump onto the page with little struggle to tease them out – that feeling of being connected directly to some kind of source you can’t define.
A script writer friend offered a simple writing exercise, to assist finding this headspace:
Go outside or to a populated place life a cafe, and begin stream-of-consciousness writing, describing everything you see, hear, feel, taste, smell. Write about all those sensory details around you. Don’t life pen from paper, for as long as you can. Don’t bother with punctuation or spelling or that editor in your head. Just write, until you’re not thinking what you’re writing. After a rest period, or later that night, look back at your writing and see what gems are in there.
(Thanks to Dan Vukovjlak and Simon Weaving for this post’s inspirations)
