This is my wake up blog. The idea is based on the concept of morning pages, which is a technique from The Artists Way by Julia Cameron. The goal of morning pages is to wake up in the morning, or whenever you wake up, and write three pages worth of stuff, what kind of stuff you might ask? Well, that's the point, it's a creativity exorcise. Three pages is a lot, so you need to start just making stuff up to fill those pages. It could be rants about things that are going on in your life, or it could be off the cuff short stories or poetry, or it could be just general blather (hey, just like this blog!)
Now, you might be saying to yourself "okay, but this sounds like a writing exorcise. What is a video geek/illustrator doing using a technique like this?" At it's most basic level, creativity is creativity. It doesn't really matter what creative discipline you practice, the little bits, let's call it the atomic structure of creativity, is going to be the same. I'm a visual thinker, I process everything as a sort of movie inside of my head, but sometimes, when it comes to creating that movie myself I need to do something to focus the internal camera. You see, there are always visuals going on inside of my head, but a lot of the time it just looks like visual chaos. I need to do something to get all that visual data flowing in some sort of narrative form. However, the goal for me a lot of the time is not to control the narrative so much as it is to introduce the kernel of an idea and then sit back and see where my imagination takes me.
I don't agree with most of the stuff that Jerry Jenkins says, Ideologically he and I are about as far apart as you can get. He did however, say something once that I found to be very profound, not just for writers, but for anyone who creates for pay. In his book Writing for the Soul Jerry says, and I am paraphrasing here, that there is no such thing as writers block. If it is your job to write, if you are getting payed to write, then you write. This works for all other creative disciplines as well. If you are an illustrator, if it is your job to create illustrations, then you do your job and you illustrate, you do what you have to to get the job done. If you make your living as a creative then you have to accept that excuses like creative block are no longer an option for you. After all, if you where a baker and you worked in a bakery you couldn't tell your customers that you have nothing to sell them because you have bread block. If you where a mechanic you couldn't tell your customers "well, I can't fix your car because I have replace carburetor block. You understand, don't you?" The answer would be "get your ass in there and fix my car or loose my business!" Those of us who work in the creative fields have to think of things the same way. We have fun jobs, but they're still jobs and when it's time to get to work you have to do what you can to get yourself to the point where your getting the job done, period.
All of that is just a very long winded way of saying that the whole reason for todays blog is to get my creative juices flowing so that I can rewrite a voice over script for a commercial that I need to have done by the early part of next week. The first draft wasn't horrible, but it needs to pop more, so I'm doing this little exorcise to get myself in the frame of mind that I need to be in to make it happen.
Creativity on demand for pay is like every other job really. Remove your excuses for not getting it done, roll up your sleeves and get to work. Don't know what to do at first? then just start doing anything and keep doing it until the structure of what you need to create begins to come together. Write, doodle, hum, whatever it takes, but prime the pump, clear the pathways so that your creativity will begin to flow.
