Creative Process Vs Product

This article draws a very important distinction for the artistic endeavor. Why is it important to distinguish between a creative process orientation and a creative product orientation? A large part of the reason has to do with pressure. There is a lot of pressure involved in putting out a finished product to the world, and the associated fears have squelched many a worthwhile project.

So let's start by looking at creative process on it's own merits, entirely separate from proving, selling, and other aspects of the product marketplace.

Creative

CREATIVE PROCESS

Creative Process Vs Product

Is an open ended, messy, experimental exploration.

It is about playing with your materials, both internal and external and seeing where they take you. It is not trying to prove anything, and thus is innocent, like a child's scribbles and mudpies.

You don't have to be a professional, you don't even need to be "good" at it in order to enjoy creative process. You dance around your bedroom to your favorite music, you find yourself dabbling in poetry writing, or suddenly want to try painting. This is for YOU, and so in order to keep your explorations in the sphere of innocence and safety, I recommend that you (at least at the beginning) not share with others. As soon as the idea of showing others our work comes in, it changes the dynamic, so just let this process be about you and for you.

Within this Process based container, you can explore all your curiosities, attractions, and whims of creative outlets and both have a lot of fun, and get to know yourself much better.  You may also stumble across therapeutic methods that help you deal with difficult emotional states. For example, I did a regular personal "dance lab" for a few months one Winter, and whenever intense or angry energy would come up, I would put a big red veil over myself and put on a specific music track and have a spazz out dance. When I would get either too vain or too shy, I would dance with masks to help me get out of myself. I didn't read these ideas in an Expressive Arts Therapy Book (though my bookshelf is full of them and I do recommend them), I just stumbled upon what worked for me while giving space to my process.

Some BENEFITS of CREATIVE PROCESS include:

o    Deepened Self-Insight- gaining access to wise, resourceful aspects of yourself and better understanding your multi-faceted being

o    Easing Suffering- Finding and making creative tools to move through difficult and painful times

o    Having fun with materials and forms without any pressure to make a product or money

o    Stumbling upon a favorite outlet or medium that will become a life-long love affair

o    A great excuse for enriching, self-nurturing time for yourself

* You are Hereby Granted Full Permission to be Messy, Explore, and Create within a realm of Process for as long as you want.  

TRANSITIONING INTO CREATIVE PRODUCT

What do I mean by creative product? Some examples include: recording an album, publishing a book, making a show, a play, choreographing a dance, designing a clothing line, and in any media, creating something for the purpose of being seen or purchased by others.

There may come a time when your organic creative process matures into a genuine desire to create something to share with others. It is only natural for a cultivated garden to bear fruits. But we must be careful as we transition our orientation into product, because many issues can come up such as: people's opinions and expectations influencing our work, ego needs to be seen, loved, validated, etc...,

Self-sabotage in many forms, critical voices (inside & out) squashing the innocence and joy out of it.

   A personal story.

I used to write a lot of songs and sing pretty much every day. For me it was a form of prayer and a joyful and easy extension of my poetry. For many years I mostly sang for myself, nature, and close friends. The times that I did share with larger groups, I got a lot of encouraging feedback and struggled not to let my head swell from the compliments. Part of me insisted that I keep this gift a pure prayer, while another part wanted to share the gift, and the kid in me still liked the idea of becoming a rock star. Finally I decided that I really did want to record a CD. Unfortunately, that inspiration turned to fears and projections and a bunch of subtle self-sabotaging. After years of this, I realized that I wasn't singing any more for devotion's sake and that I had gotten too much in my own way and I threw my hands up and stopped singing and playing the guitar for many years. I let a part of myself push me towards a product, and in that lost a precious gift in my life.

I still haven't fully reclaimed my singing, and that is why I emphasize caution and clear motivation when moving toward a product.

TIPS for Transitioning:

1.) Make sure you feel that the time is ripe and it is a natural internally driven decision

2.) Do some journaling and give a forum for all the different voices in you and their opinions on this decision. Don't ignore the critical voices, just get their messages down on paper. Often these voices have a really good piece of advice, though it may be hidden under a discouraging sound bite. Once you have all the sound bites down on paper you can look at them and see where potential conflicts may arise. Exploring polarized or conflicting voices in theater or on the page can be a highly effective way to resolve them and thus prevent them from playing out in a bigger way in your life.

3.) Keep a commitment to some agenda free process time. Allow yourself to doodle and free write and sing nonsense songs even if you are in a serious process of writing a book, recording an album, etc...

CREATIVE PRODUCT

During process we are always trying to keep the critic and the editor at bay, but now is the time to summon the editor onto the scene. You will need to feel strong enough in your offering to hear others critique and take it into account. This is the time when you really open yourself to feedback and take others perspectives into consideration, as you are now creating for more than yourself- you are creating for an audience, for the world.

The trick is to stay connected to your authentic inspiration and motivation and also polish your works with the world in mind.

At any time that you get too spun out on external orientation and fears, give yourself permission to dip back into process for process's sake and find your well of inspiration there.

Avoid the temptation to add a time pressure and try to push your product out too fast. Give it time to ripen and develop, as a mother does a baby in her womb.  This is not a doo dad from an assembly line, but a creative extension of your essence, extended as a gift to the world. Try not to think too much about the monetary aspects just yet and focus instead on doing the best job you can.

Some blessed days you will just spill forth content and progress gracefully and swiftly. Many days you will want to procrastinate and distract yourself and dig your heals in the dirt. You will need to find your own balance between allowance and self-discipline.

Do your best to enjoy the process. Make it a labor of love.

Doing what you love for all the right reasons will help you to love yourself. Creating from selflessness and self- love will steer you from many a pitfall and greatly enhance the chance that your creation will be of true value and benefit and be loved by others.

Creative Process Vs Product

Audette Sophia is a multi-modal artist and certified coach specializing in helping creative entrepreneurs synthesize their offerings into dynamically successful career strategies. She is also an educator and branding/promotional consultant.

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Understanding Creativity - Person, Place, Product and Process (Part 1)

What do person, place, product, and process (the 4 P's) have in common? According to creativity researchers, these are the four generally accepted facets to creativity. Additionally these facets are interrelated, which makes creativity complicated to understand and to cultivate, especially in organizations. Understanding its multiple aspects, however, is a critical first step in bringing more creativity, and hence innovation, into a corporate environment. Creativity is generally considered to be a new idea or insight that is recognized by experts in that field as having value. Creativity is the necessary first step to fueling innovation. This first article, in a series of articles about the facets of creativity, will present an overview of the 4 P's of creativity and how they are interrelated.

Person

Creativity

Stories about modern eminent creatives such as Steve Jobs and I.M. Pei and past creatives such as Thomas Edison, Madame Curie and Michelangelo warp our image of the creative person. We tend to think of people as being either creative or not creative, like it is a fixed attribute such as one's height or eye-color. Creativity is not unique or mysterious; we are all creative to different degrees. Creativity has little to do with IQ. It is our usage or under-usage of our ordinary thinking processes that impact our creative output. Creative thinking approaches can be learned by all individuals. Research has shown that the use of creative thinking techniques reduces costs, increases efficiency and positively impacts ROI.

Place

Our families, schools, community, religion, and workplace as well as the overall culture in which we live have major impacts on creativity; this is referred to formally as the press of the environment, which I refer to simply as 'place.' The values and norms of our upbringing and current environment dictate whether we are encouraged or discouraged from being creative and whether our ideas or products are recognized as being creative. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Claremont professor and creativity researcher, says that the environment has more of an impact on creative outcomes than an individual intent on creativity. Interestingly, studies have shown that creativity tends to thrive during times of political unrest, civil disturbance, and intellectual diversity. For example many young people were motivated to become artists and architects during the Renaissance. Teresa Amabile, Harvard professor and organizational creativity researcher says that our social environment can significantly affect intrinsic motivation, both positively and negatively. We often become motivated to think and act creatively when we become personally interested in or curious about a new technology, research data or trend. Working on something imposed on us by outside sources, without being personally interested has negative effects on our creativity. For example, the proliferation of the Internet has laid the foundation for an increase in artists and designers. This new surge in visual images has contributed to the current trend in businesses to utilize design thinking in addition to analytical thinking.

Product

Can you make money from it? Do your peers and society admire you because of it? In our Western, materially focused culture, a physical product or outcome is typically the only facet of creativity that is recognized. We look at the finished product and forget there was a process of multiple creative failures that happened first. We may disregard the environment or the team of people that encouraged the development of the product. New products and ideas often have a difficult time getting past the 'gatekeepers' who determine the idea's value, sometimes arbitrarily or with limited foresight. A person known in the field or from a field predisposed to creativity, such as advertising is likely to have an easier time getting past the gatekeepers than an unknown or someone from a 'non-creative' industry. Occasionally the product or idea is so radical and ahead of its time, it gets ridiculed or goes unrecognized for years. The concept of Federal Express is a well-known story of a ridiculed idea; van Gogh was considered a sociopathic recluse rather than a genius, and died alone and penniless.

Process

What must occur in order for us to produce a creative idea or product? There are potentially exponential trials of creative processes compared to final products. Edison tried thousands of times to produce an electric filament for long lasting electric lighting. Shouldn't all those failed attempts be considered creative? Our culture, however, tends to label only the one successful outcome as creative.

Each of us goes through four stages during our creative process. Preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification were originally introduced by Graham Wallas in 1926 in his book "The Art of Thought." In the first stage, preparation, we set ourselves up for creative success by acquiring some skill, gathering data, or understanding the basic problem that needs to be addressed. This is perhaps the most difficult stage as suggested by Edison in his famous line, "Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration." In the next stage, incubation, our brain is working on things in the background. It is the time away from conscious thinking. This is the most powerful of the steps and the one that probably gets overlooked most often. It is hard not to consciously and continually work on a problem to conclusion, since we all have a tendency to want to solve problems as soon as possible, and are often pushed by our organizations to do so. The 'aha' or illumination stage, however, can only occur after an incubation period.Sometimes we do not get a solution - but another way to approach the problem. But when we get that 'aha,' we know with certainty that we are on the right path. Finally, we need to be able to recognize when a solutions fits the problem. In the last stage, verification, we try and test the solution. We often go back and forth rapidly between the stages. The ability to shift between stages is important to the creative process.

How we think, how the gatekeepers respond to what we produce, the environment in which we live, and the processes we follow all combine to impact the production and acceptance of new ideas, insights and products. It is impossible to consider any one of these facets in a vacuum. We cannot separate the person from their environment, the idea from the person, the process from the environment, or the product from the process. It is complicated, but not impossible, to address all of these facets within an organizational setting. In the next series of articles, I will go into each of the four facets in more depth.

Understanding Creativity - Person, Place, Product and Process (Part 1)

Copyright 2009 J.E. Brunn, LLC. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in any way, and give author name credit.

Joanne Brunn, Ph.D. is a creative thinking expert, consultant, author and speaker. To learn more or to speak with Joanne about a consulting, training, or speaking engagement, please visit http://joannebrunn.com