Pacing, Meditating, Thinking – The Creative Process
Every now and again I get a peek into my own creative process. For the last few weeks I’ve been working with a new client. Our phone conversations have mostly been listening to stories he wants included in a memoir. I’ve taken lots of notes while, in background, my mind has been racing around trying to find some sort of organizing principle or path.
A couple of weeks ago he sent me about 30 pages of stuff he’s written over the last few years. I printed it out and read it, and continued to wonder how in the world I could shape all this into a book that someone might want to read.
Not really knowing what else to do I put together a sort of timeline of his life and sent it to him to edit and refine. It came back to me with lots more information, but the shaping of the actual book was still a total mystery to me.
This morning I included the writing of this book in my meditation and although I began to feel some real peace, I still didn’t know how to proceed. So I opened a file called msoutline (ms means manuscript to me.) Then I dinked around on the web looking for information about writing a memoir, read excerpts on Amazon and generally paced around.
Finally a barebones outline began to appear and I started writing it down as it came. At the moment I’ve got working titles for eight chapters, a particular story for each one and flashbacks that will put everything in context. I put that in a really cool looking table and printed it out.
Then I remembered my client also wants to tie certain songs into each chapter, so I added a second column and plugged in the two songs I’m sure of.
How about that! We’ve actually got the start of a structure we can work with. I’ll ship it to the client later today for his comments and even if he hates it, we’ll have made real progress.
Each of us approaches the creative process differently, and I often find I approach it differently on each project, but, when I’m willing and when I allow enough space, it comes.
Write well and often,
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Tags: clients, freelance-writing, writingRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Musings From A Freelance Writer
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