journeys: the creative process.

Now Playing: The Outside by Taylor Swift (I can still see you, this ain't the best view, on the outside looking in)

I am in the process of uploading yet another feminist rant (it's all coming out, all these convoluted half-formed ideas are all slotting into place) but I've always wanted to share the creative process - how I create things.

I've always believed that people - especially women - are designed to create. Our world has become so heavily based on destruction - destroying things, people, places, identities, cultures, religions - instead of evolving and creating and recreating. I love art because I create things - something is there, of my own doing, of my own work and effort and passion and gifts, that wasn't there before, and would never be there if not for me. Call it a poem, a blog post, a book, an essay. Later I might call it love, marriage, a child. I want my life to be about creating.

The part I love best about writing is the creative process. It takes time and love and energy and effort - which is why I don't like in-class essays.

An essay, for me, starts with an idea. I'm not one of those people who can read anything and not have any opinions on it. I tend to gravitate towards gendered readings using feminist theory, because that's what I'm most familiar with, but I also write about Christian existentialism, the impact of patriarchy and Judeo-Christian values, the use of micro narrative and the representation of the subaltern in post-colonial literary theory...I'll give anything a go. It takes me a few days sometimes to nut out a proper thesis, but once I've got my thesis I'm good to go.

The first stage of writing an essay is planning - planning planning planning. I went from TOTALLY HATING PLANNING to TOTALLY LOVING PLANNING. I used to just work from my thesis but I found I wasted a lot of time writing lots and lots of really bad drafts and annoying my teachers to no end, so I started planning out paragraphs in dot points and wrestling with ideas with my teachers. This time I was too lazy and loquacious to go dot pointy so I just wrote a very short essay with no evidence that was a huge brainstorm and plan all in one, and then as I was writing my real essay I checked through all the points I had come up with and backed it up with evidence.

And then I reread. And reread. And reread. And reread. Until three in the morning.

That might not have been such a good idea.

For blog posts I normally read something or talk about something or something will just occur to me and BAM! I'm thinking about what to write on my blog. I think about it a lot when I'm alone or...bored in class...and I write down a lot of things in my...notebook that I'm supposed to be making psych notes in...

Then when I get hold of a computer I type it up, review it, click publish! Bingo! But the creative process is always there - I don't just plonk down, write some shit, and then forget that I'm a blog mistress. Finding new material is easy for me, but it's ongoing. There is just so much stuff to write about.

Poems are strange. I can spend weeks working on a poem that never comes into being. Sometimes poems literally take five seconds to scribble down. Sometimes I'll get an idea at school and I'll just write and rewrite it over and over and over, each draft slightly different and more revised than the previous. And then I get onto my blog and make even more edits.

But the creative process of poems - inspiration, etc - is all on mah poetry page.

When people tell me that they don't like writing and don't understand why I like writing, it's because they a) don't see the value in the final product, but more importantly, they don't see the beauty of the creative process. You know when you meet artists and they're constantly drawing, sketching, taking pictures, thinking about what to paint next? I know what that's like. It's all consuming. Everything is something to write about, something to paint with words. It's impossible to describe...it's like being in love. I can't help it, I can't resist it, and I totally, completely, irrationally love it.

Which is why I'm a blogger with 1000+ posts. Which is why I love writing essays. Which is why I love reading and thinking and creating and exploring. It's through my writing that I've learned the wisdom behind the cliche of 'it's the journey, not the destination'