The Creative Process Unveiled: Tapping into Your Creativity

Photo courtesy of Wonderlane

“The highest level of creativity unfolds through play.” – Albert Einstein

I believe that each of us possesses an innate creativity. The difference between those who utilize their creativity and those who do not may be a difference between knowing and not knowing how to consciously or intuitively tap into a creative process. For those who don’t know how to tap into their own creativity, a creative process is an elusive path. And even for those who intuitively grasp a creative process, it can remain a veiled method, shrouded in mystery.

In this article, I want to expose “The Creative Process” as a myth. In my opinion, there is no singular, universal process for tapping into creativity. Rather, there are many methods that might suit different creativities. Given that there is no singular method for making art, I want to suggest how you might reflect upon and develop your own creative process model in order to better understand your creativity.

Understanding your own creative process has a few benefits. First, it provides a clearer method for how you make your art and develop your craft, unveiling what works and what doesn’t. Second, it can clarify your creative vision, giving you access to new, more-challenging work. Finally, when problems arise in the making of your art, knowing your own creative process provides a kind of roadmap for getting over or around those bumps along your creative highway.

Wallas’ Model of the Process of Creative Thought

There are several creative process models that are available, depending on your desired outcome. However, one of the earliest and perhaps the best known creative process model was developed by Graham Wallas in his 1926 book, The Art of Thought. Here’s what his model looks like:

• Preparation. With this step, you define and study your question or topic—planning and making observations.
• Incubation. For this step, you set aside the question or topic and disengage from it.
• Illumination. This is the moment the idea emerges and becomes clear.
• Verification. This final step involves verifying the idea—judging its truth and comparing and checking it out against other ideas.

As you can see, the incubation and illumination stages of Wallas’ model rely heavily on unconscious processes. What happens during the incubation stage is somewhat of a mystery, which somehow culminates in illumination—in the sudden appearance of a new idea.

The Wallas model is seriously lacking in its usefulness for poets and other artists. Its conceptions and even its language are more suited to scientific discovery. However, it does begin to suggest what is possible for a creative process model.

My Creative Process Model

In developing my own creative process model, I have borrowed from Wallas. However, I’ve attempted to shift the language and to revise the conceptions in ways that better suit my understanding of how I tap into my creativity in order to produce a poem.

Here’s a model of my creative process for writing poetry:

• Exploration. My poetry begins by observing my world, by experiencing it through my senses and thought processes and by investigating my feelings. During exploration, I collect words, thoughts, feelings, and external phenomenon: the way the sun slants across my writing desk in the middle of the day; the sounds of the birds in the morning; how fear weighs low in my belly and anger constricts my chest; and how the word “perpetuity” reminds me of “purple” which reminds me of a setting sun. Significantly, this exploration phase may be unconscious sometimes, but through mindfulness—the purposeful attempt to be aware of my surroundings, feelings, and thoughts—exploration becomes a conscious practice, a kind of intentional playing around with experience.

• Reflection. Reflection allows me to assign meaning to these experiences and phenomenon and to continue to explore the relationships between them, and perhaps comparing them to one another. For instance, this is when I reflect on the sounds of the birds in the morning and when I consider exactly what they sound like and why the birds and their sounds are significant to me. There may or may not be a poetic image or thought there, but I won’t know until I attempt to fully describe the observation and to assign it with meaning. As another example, I might consider the sun’s slant across my writing desk at midday. What does that represent in my mind? It could represent the way the sun illuminates or shines a spotlight on my inner feelings. Or its glare in my squinting eyes could suggest a blinding to my feelings. There are perhaps hundreds of meanings that I might assign to any one observation, and this period of reflection is when I begin to play around with meanings and do just that. Also, for me, reflection is often a social practice. By participating in conversations with others about my opinions, feelings, and observations, I begin to hone in on meaning. For instance, I read about and saw pictures of the devastating aftermath of the January earthquake in Haiti; but it was only when I began to talk about it with others that my thoughts, feelings, and observations became meaningful in a way that could emerge in a poem.

• Illumination. Rather than describing the sudden appearance of an idea from my unconscious mind into my conscious mind, illumination is when I get to truly play around and start putting words to paper. For example, I might write: “Perpetuity is purple is the setting sun, and I am colored and undone by infinity.” Or whatever. The point is that I begin to figure out the best way to organize my thoughts, the images, and their meanings. As another example, I may want to write about how anxiety debilitates me on a regular basis, which it does. So I might remember my observations and their meanings and write: “Fear weighs low in my belly. Anger binds my chest. I wear sadness on my shoulders. I am an anxious body.” Or something like that. Through this tinkering with language, illumination is not a mysterious process; rather, it is the moment at which one crafts the poem, playing around and experimenting with words by placing them on a page.

• Evolution. As poets, we know that poetry requires revisions. Through the continuous process of exploration, reflection, and illumination, the poem grows and evolves from draft to draft. By the end of this process–this playing around–the poem may have shifted subjects or may have lost the very images that inspired it. Evolution, like illumination, is not a sudden and elusive process. Rather, it is the method of honing one’s craft by organizing and re-organizing the words, their images and their meanings on the page. As an example, consider what Richard Hugo in Triggering Town has to say about revision:

If you want to use what’s there, use the same words and play with the syntax.

This blue lake still has resolve.

This lake still blue with resolve

By playing with the syntax, we’ve dropped the weak verb and left the sentence open with a chance for a stronger one.

You might note here that Hugo emphasizes revision as a type of playing around with words and syntax, which shifts meanings and often strengthens ideas.

• Creation. In my mind, creation is the poem itself—initial and subsequent drafts as well as its completed form. How do you know when a poem is finished? Some poets will tell you that you just “know.” You simply know when the poem is done and no more play or words will make it better or more of a poem. You simply know when you’ve got it right, when it’s perfect in your mind. However, I believe this “knowing” is when we are unconsciously tapping into a creative process. Thinking more consciously, I suggest that a poem is completed when it has delivered what it promised from the outset—some illumination and original expression of authentic experience and/or thought.

This model of my creative process isn’t intended to be a series of sequential steps. I believe during the writing of a poem, all of these processes are in play. During illumination, I might be exploring and collecting images along the way or assigning meaning and reflecting as well. And every time I put another word on the page, I have a creation of sorts, even if it is a half-finished poem in my mind. So, these processes are in constant interplay when I am thinking about poetry or writing poetry.

In my opinion, the best work comes from playing, which is why my creative process model highlights play. When I’m writing, I’m playing around with ideas, words, and feelings, letting them emerge from my imagination. It is in this conscious playing that the unconscious easily takes over and you discover what you could not otherwise consciously force. Playing isn’t a mystical, mysterious activity. Rather, it is an innate and natural tendency.

Developing your own creative process model

I offer this model of my creative process as merely a suggestion for what’s possible. For developing your own model, think for a moment on your own creative process, on how you create a poem or other art form. Even if you’ve never thought of it, you do have some mental process and creative practice through which you create your art. You might do some research on existing models of various creative processes in order to consider your own. But the point is to reflect on how YOU make art; so, it’s not necessary to know what the “experts” think. Once you’ve thought on your process, try writing it down and describing the different elements. By playing around with your thoughts, you may find that your creative process isn’t as mysterious or as elusive as it may initially seem.

In the end, a creative process is an ever-evolving journey to your creativity. How you created poetry when you first started out may be entirely different from how you create it now. Regardless, unveiling your own creative process can demonstrate how you get to your creative destination. And how you get there is as significant as the destination itself. For me, it’s my creative process—tinkering and playing around with ideas, experiences, feelings and external observations, putting them into words, placing them on a page, and seeing what takes shape—that keeps me coming back to poetry.