@West Side Joe posted:Great description of your creative process, Patrick. With me it's a different process: at some point an overall picture forms in my mind of what I want to do. That picture then stays with me over the coming months or even years. I sometimes sit in my train room just thinking about how I'm going to realize the next step towards that vision, without actually doing anything. At other times, even when I'm busy with life's daily challenges and chores, the vision is always there in the back of my mind. Sometimes the next step comes to me while I'm falling asleep. But once that initial vision takes form, it's pretty much locked in and doesn't change, right through to the finished product.
Interesting -- it seems the creative process works somewhat similarly for many of us, but perhaps in different 'keys' for each of us.
I find the process is most often in an interior dialog form (with pictures instead of words) between the more verbal part of myself, and the more visual, "craftsman" part. It's a back-and-forth, as the craft part first visualizes 'candidate' solutions for the problem or project du jour (which often comes just as I'm waking up -- which can really wreak havoc with me getting *back* to sleep if I wake up early!), which the 'spokesman' me mulls over and tests for suitability, discarding ideas that don't seem likely to solve the problem at hand and 'requesting' revisions, which are served up, again as images.
At some point after I have a solid solution candidate in mind, I commit to fabrication, where the process continues, most often to a more or less successful conclusion. However, sometimes the proverbial (and sometimes literal!) wheels fall off as I try to implement the candidate solution, and at that point I just have to back off until I've further refined my ideas. I've learned to be philosophical about the trial-and-error nature of the process, and try to get better at recognizing the optimum time to switch from thought to action.
