Don't try to figure it out, just receive

My foolproof plan for actually accomplishing creative work

Yep, you read that right. My plan is to plan on…not having a plan. Or at least, letting go of the plan and seeing what shows up.

I woke up the other morning thinking about a project I wanted to work on—a piece of art. I lay there, turning the thing around and around in my head, trying to figure it out, gradually feeling more and more smothered and honestly somewhat panic-stricken by my own inability to completely and perfectly conceptualize what I needed to do.

Then like a freaking divine intercession (which let’s face it, it probably was), I heard in my head: Stop trying to figure it out. Just receive it the idea.

Ideas arrive like feathers found on the path: unexpected, delightful…sometimes inexplicable!

Oh yeah….

Honestly, I should probably have this phrase taped to my forehead. Some creative people do figure it all out in advance. They make careful plans, create lists or something (I’m assuming?), do research. They approach their work like a puzzle that needs solving and their nice orderly brains set about happily hunting for the pieces.

That sounds pretty nice. It is also…not me. Oddly, if I get caught up in planning a project, that is often a sign that I’m getting in my own way. I dislike outlines. (Unless I’m revising a book—then they’re useful. But outlining something first? Ugh. As you can imagine, this made writing extended synopses for my second and third published books very challenging….) I don’t care much for preliminary research. I can’t make a list for something I haven't done yet.

It’s not that I never utilize these things—lists are very useful in the appropriate context, for example the grocery store—but they simply don’t work for my creative brain. It’s very difficult for me to articulate something I haven’t created yet. It feels awkward and backwards.

This is what my creative brain is like: an idea wanders in from the grand motherland of ideas (which probably exists in another dimension). This is a very exciting moment and my brain happily spends tons of time tangoing with this new presence, listening to its sound, feeling out its form and energy, taking dictation, basically, from this newness that has just arrived. Then we happily move to the exciting stage of first creating with the new idea—writing down the words that have taken my thought process hostage, or sketching out the image consuming my inner imaginative theater.

Then usually the idea simmers down. It wanders off to the back of my mental stovetop and bubbles along back there, occasionally sending out spurts of clarity. I write new scenes, or new sketches, until I’ve got enough information to, well, keep going. Sometimes this takes hours, sometimes years. Regardless, I simply seem to hit a point where I’ve sussed out enough about the idea to begin to put it into form.

Outlining doesn’t enter this process. I rarely even take notes, though it depends on the project. Some projects do require up-front research.

Here is what I do in practice: I plan on showing up. Picture me with a scrap of an idea—a mental image—clutched in my proverbial fist. It’s been mulled over so much it’s gone a little soft and smooshy around the edges. It might not even be much of an idea, just a few sentences or a glimpse of a scene, but it’s enough to go on. Enough to show up, and get started, and see what happens.

There isn’t a lot of “figuring it out” because to me, that means I’m trying to rationalize my way through a process that’s about a kind of thinking-yet-not-thinking. It’s not about me trying to create a thing by my own effort. It’s a process of being open and receptive to this mysterious, chimerical idea, trying to gather all the impressions I can from it, and then trusting it to steer me in the right direction.

Does that sound a bit nuts? Probably. But it’s also, really and truly, as best I can describe how I work. Or, how work comes to me. It’s a full sensory experience, opening to a new idea. Like making a new friend, you don’t want to ask too many questions at first and scare them off. If you’re quiet and observe, they will often reveal themselves to you. When you just show up and receive them, some kind of magic happens.

And that is the only way I know to make creative work come into being…and it works! At least, for me. What’s your process like?