The Fruits of our Creative Labor

All life moves in cycles. Whether we notice the cycle of the seasons, where the earth transitions from growth to dormancy across the months, or the cycle within a day, as the sun rises and sets. Our lives are bound by cycles.

It is easy to forget this, as we look at the results of a cycle. In harvest time, we may see the results of the farmer's efforts in the piles of fruits and vegetables in the market, but we don't see all of the time and energy spent to get there. Preparing the soil, sowing the seeds, tending the growth, picking the fruit - all happen outside of our realm of vision. We only see the end result, the tomatoes sitting on the table, ready to eat.

Creativity is like this too. I am revisiting my concept of the Spiral of Creativity lately. I have had to remind myself that creativity is a cycle. I remind myself that creating something new and launching it into the world is not as easy as the end result would suggest. Shiny, delicious tomatoes don't just end up on tables without a lot of someone's time, spent in the dirt. That time in the dirt is when you "go dark" to the outside world. The time of the spiral where you are acting on and finishing an idea, doing something to make it real. No one else can see the effort you are putting in, to get things launched. They will only see the final result. It may look like nothing is going on for a while, as you create something new, even to you.

It is so much easier to be in the starting phases of the spiral, absorbing, processing and practicing. It's fun, and takes less time and energy to keep things moving. You can have multiple things going at once. My recent experience suggests it takes a lot less energy to jot down a few ideas about what you would like in a website, than to clearly articulate the details to a web designer. It takes less energy to sketch out layouts and envision them in your mind than it does to populate something real.

When a project is in the "finishing" phase of the spiral, there may not be much energy for anything else. All focus narrows to that one item that needs to be launched into the world. I was reminded of this fact on Tuesday, when I had no words to write here. I had images, lovely images, but no words would come. The creative energy I use for writing on my blog was being used in other ways.

For a short while I thought something was wrong, until I remembered how all things cycle, including creativity. Until I remembered the spiral and how I'm nearing the launching edge with my new website and new classes. At least this time in the spiral, I've been through the process before. The first time, as I was creating Find Your Eye, the final parts of the spiral were hard because I hadn't completed a full cycle before. Now I know how wonderful it is to launch something new and real into the world. All of the time and energy is worth it.

Whether it's vegetables or classes or websites or art, I'm reminded the Spiral of Creativity applies. You can't bring something new into the world without an expenditure of time and energy. You don't get those delicious tomatoes without some digging in the dirt.


_________________________
What's going on around Kat Eye Studio...

• This weekend is the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk. Are you participating? I am!
• Don't miss out on this great, free source of inspiration: World's Biggest Summit. It starts tomorrow, and I'm a sponsor - yay!
• The current Exploring with a Camera theme is The Color Wheel: Part 2. Check out the post and join in the exploration.
• Registration is open for Digital Photography Basics! Class starts October 16. Visit here for the details.
• Want to know what's going on in the studio? You can subscribe to the Kat Eye News to stay up-to-date on all the happenings.

A Different Approach

For several months now, I've had a dearth of creative reading. Oh, I've been reading a lot, mostly fiction novels. I just haven't been able to find a book I like for my daily creative reading since I finished Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach at the end of last year. This morning I sat down to read and I find myself with three inspiring books in progress at the moment. It was hard to choose! Times ebb and flow, interests come and go. It's clearly time for me to focus on creativity again, bring balance to my personal equation, after several months of focusing on primarily on photography.

As I mentioned in my Claim your Artist post the other day, one of the books I've started is Julia Cameron's Vein of Gold, a sequel to The Artist's Way. She starts out similarly to the The Artist's Way, introducing her fundamental tools of the Morning Pages, Artist Dates and a few other things. While I have loved her writing and ideas, there is one thing I don't love about her books: How adamant that she is that you use the tools she gives, in a specific way, on a specific frequency. She's the teacher, she's taught this to thousands (maybe millions of people, through her books), she knows it works and that's the end of the discussion.

But here's the thing: She doesn't know me. She doesn't know what works for me, how I think, what I've tried in the past. She has a lot to teach me, but it won't work if it doesn't fit my style. I know me and I know this: Requiring a task be done on a rigid schedule with rigid guidelines flips me right over into the obsessive achiever part of my personality. The part of me that tracks everything as a number and berates myself when I don't follow it as instructed. The part of me that will kill the emerging artist at every opportunity.

Through my creative journey I've learned I need to try out the tools a teacher provides, and then fit them to me. I've made journaling part of my regular practice, but I journal probably 4 to 6 times per week and don't require a certain length. The requirements of "Morning Pages" never worked for me. I've learned the value of creative excursions and explorations on my own, of filling the well, but on my own schedule. I may not be following the instructions of the "Artist Dates" but I get the same benefits. I follow the spirit of the teachings, not necessarily the absolute.

I will confess as well, I didn't fill out one worksheet, one questionnaire, answer one "recall a time when xxxx happened" exercise in The Artist's Way as proscribed. I didn't follow the recommend schedule for reading. I would move quicker or slower as the material worked for me. I've done the same with many, many creative books now. I never read Simple Abundance daily, I would pick it up as it inspired me and read chunks of it at a time. I skipped all of the fill-in-the-blank exercises of Martha Beck's Finding your own North Star but the material has stuck with me nonetheless.

I read, absorb, journal, write about the most important pieces to me here. The ideas go into the "swirl" I've talked about before, become the fuel that keeps my creativity burning bright. I gain an enormous amount from the books I read and the classes I take. There is so much to learn from great teachers. I believe in trying on ideas and methods, and then trimming them, nipping and tucking them to make them fit me. We have to believe in our inner wisdom and intuition. We have to rely on our own experience and awareness of ourselves, of how we learn and integrate knowledge. We have to make the teachings ours if they are going to be useful.

Have you ever started a book or a class, something that comes highly recommended like The Artist's Way, only to quit because you didn't like the methods or didn't want to follow the procedure? If so, I don't think you're alone. Here's something new to try, if you find yourself in that situation: Just read the material. See what resonates with you, inspires you. Who knows, you might end up liking some of the suggestions and incorporating them in your own way, in your own time. Or maybe not, but you'll have gained something more through the reading.

Today's picture is inside the amazing Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, by architect Antoni Gaudí. Here's an artist who found his inspiration in novel sources. I'm sure he learned valuable information from his teachers, but I am glad he didn't follow their proscribed methods exactly. He integrated and applied the knowledge in his own way, developing new methods. The world of architecture is more beautiful for his unique and creative interpretations.

Take that to heart today.

So Many Angles

Lately I've been thinking about time and space. I've started to see more personal time free up, and I have not been intentional with how I spend it. I've spent it on the computer, hopping around on the internet, reading blogs and getting "caught up." That certainly fills the time, but leaves me without the space for dreaming and scheming, letting the new ideas come and flow. Letting creativity take me where it will.

This line of thought, about how I spend my time and energy, is not new. It's been with me for a while as my Dramatic Cropping post will attest. These thoughts are a natural outcome right now of finishing my work on Find Your Eye as well as participation in Christine Kane's Uplevel Your Life Mastery Program. My brain is filled with a lot of thoughts about being clear and intentional about my time and energy.

I have no answers right now. There are just too many angles and directions to sort out in this moment. But I am aware and asking the questions, and that is always the start. Taking the first step, to start close in.

Image is from Nice, France.

Capture the Sky

I have been fascinated with skies lately. Whenever I am out and about, I find myself capturing a few images of mostly sky. Maybe just a little bit of something else, to ground the image, like this tree in silhouette.

There is so much possibility in the sky. It's wide open, too big to capture it all with the camera. I can only capture little glimpses, enough to give an impression. The glimpses are so fleeting, as the sky is ever changing. The clouds and the light do not hold for any photographer, I have to catch what I can.

I am once again reminded of the Spiral of Creativity by this image of the sky. We do the best we can to capture the fleeting inspiration that comes to us, and pull it into our spiral. We figure out how to make this transitory and insubstantial thing, this idea, into something real. For all of the giant, expansive nature of ideas, we have to break them down. Frame them into something manageable in order to proceed.

Turn an idea into a manageable plan. Capture a piece of the sky. It's all the same thing, and about as easy to do either. Yet, I am challenged to continue trying. Maybe, just once in a while, something great comes out of the effort. Something I can share with you.

The Spiral of Creativity

This photo of Parco di Monza in summer has been coming up in my mind lately, which means I need to share it. I loved the cloud formations on that day, the spirals I saw. I didn't see the clouds as spiraling inward, but moving outward. I saw in the clouds a spiral of creativity, where ideas are born at the center and then gain momentum as they spin toward the outside. The ideas eventually break free and are sent off into the world at high speed, flung with the creative energy they attained through the spiral. All that, read in the clouds on a summer day.

I can see why this image has popped into my head, because the whole idea of the spiral of creativity fits perfectly with some reflection I've been doing. As I work hard on finishing my Find Your Eye class, I've realized that I have moved to a dramatically different place in the creativity spiral. The place where the ideas are about to completely break free, and move off into the world.

I decided today I would share these fresh thoughts on the creativity spiral. These are the different places or phases I've experienced, so far. I'm curious to know, is this how you have experienced it too? Where are you in the spiral?

The first phase of the spiral is Absorbing. Opening yourself up to all of the creative ideas that exist in our world, and absorbing them into our creative center through reading, observing, learning. This is an active step, because you have to seek the ideas out and expend energy into taking them in to yourself. This may also be the absolute center of the spiral, like the eye of a hurricane, the place where there is calm. You need peace and quiet to absorb.

Processing is the second phase. I think the phrase I like to use, "I have all of these ideas swirling around in my head," fits perfectly here. This is where the ideas you absorbed begin to be transformed. You think about them, write about them. You are seeking where they fit in with your life, your experience, your philosophy. You are in the spiral proper now, beginning to really move.

After Processing comes Practicing. You begin playing around with your creative ideas. You give your creative self a playground, a safe place to explore and practice. You delight in the discoveries you make. It is through this practice and play that new connections are made in the ideas you've been absorbing and processing. Brand new ideas are born.

At some point, Practicing transitions into Acting. Some of the ideas that are born during play will become ready for action. Things are really moving now in the spiral. Dreaming of how to bring the idea to fruition becomes doing. You begin to take the next steps, to make the ideas real and get them ready to release into the world.

Finishing comes next, very close to the outside of the spiral. You are moving quickly, putting the work into completing the remaining actions to send the idea into the world. This, in some ways, is the hard part, because it's not all swirly fun and play. It's the nuts and bolts of getting things done. There are deadlines and external requirements at times. The excitement is still there, but it is different, tempered with effort. In this phase, your commitment is tested. Will you really launch the idea into the world? Or will you let it sink back into the spiral?

I find myself in the Finishing phase of the spiral right now, with my Find Your Eye class. It is interesting to discover, even with the effort it is taking, that my commitment is stronger than ever. Each time I work on the class, no matter how much I still have yet to do or how much I see that I need to improve, I find myself saying, "This is good stuff. I need to get this out to people." This one idea, of the many that are born in my spiral of creativity, will be launched into the world.

What comes next in the spiral of creativity? I don't know yet. I can only see the parts of the spiral I have been through so far. I don't know what happens when the creative idea is launched into the world, but soon I will. Have you launched your creative idea? What has come next for you? I would love for you to share your experiences with me, to let me know what phase comes next in the creative spiral.

While I don't yet personally know what comes next, there is one thing I do know:  In order to work, the spiral must always be kept in motion. In order to keep the momentum, even for one idea to launch, I have to be Absorbing and Processing and Practicing too. Without that continual creative energy fueling the movement, the spiral will die. Like clouds on a sunny day, it would will eventually blow away, disappear into the sky. So I keep reading and journaling and writing here, sharing my little insights with you all, so that my spiral of creativity continues.

Today's 9 Muses Musing prompt is SHARING. This is the post I needed to write today, regardless of the prompt, and I'm surprised that it even is remotely related.  Tomorrow's prompt is STORIES.