Order and Disorder in the Creative Cycle
Experience Four Faces of Creativity in any Stage
Spark, Search, Solve, and Share have distinct energies, challenges, joys, and jobs to do. And they can show up anywhere, any time.
It’s a little like the human life cycle, which we might think of as childhood, adolescence, early and middle adulthood, and elderhood. Clearly, we are in one of these life stages at a time, or possibly straddling two of them while in transition.
But whatever life stage we are in, we can experience moments of childhood innocence or wonder, revisit or preview some of the angst or transformation work of our adolescence, or see a flash of our future or past adulthood or elderhood.
Creative stages are something like that: you may be in the second stage of the project, yet still experience the features of any of the other stages.
Rick’s Four Stages out of Order
In the last post, we watched Rick write a novel across the evolving cycle of creativity in four stages.
In any stage, Rick may experience the opportunities and challenges of the other stages.
For example, in Share, the fourth and final stage of the project, he also experiences:
Fresh ideas and inspiration—for this novel and potential future creative work—popping into thought (Spark).
Feeling lost and again without footing, and finding his way forward once more, trying on this approach and then that one, until at last he has a grasp on how he can enter the wild unknown of this last chapter (Search).
Slogging through one creative or practical problem after another as he works his way toward the ending (Solve).
Your Creative Stages in Two Dimensions
Just as Rick’s book project took shape across the four stages, your project, whatever it is, will track fairly neatly across the four stages. That’s one dimension of the cycle of creativity. It’s an orderly side to creative work, the hands of a clock face tracing a familiar pattern, project after project.
Rick also experienced aspects of several stages from the perspective of each official stage, and so will you. That’s one of the messy-fruitful aspects of the creative experience—more kaleidoscope than clock face.
Wherever you are, you can be grounded in the familiar, common ground of this stage of the creative cycle. And you can be surprised, challenged, and inspired to find elements of any part of the creative arc, no matter where you are.