Make A Plan For Your Creative Life

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Make a plan.
Whether you’re engaged in your creative life professionally or simply as a vehicle for personal growth (an important distinction to make), I recommend you make a creative plan. If you do this, you too will find both your productivity and fulfillment will increase, in a way that’s meaningful to you. Having defined what you need to accomplish, your unconscious will go to the work of fulfilling it, generating many ideas over time. You’ll find yourself ready to make the most of unexpected opportunities as they arise. Put this all in writing using your own words. Writing increases retention 72%. If you write something down, you’ll be 75% more likely to take action on it. Remember, while other people can help you discuss and refine your plan as it develops, no one can do it for you. For you to truly understand and benefit from it, you have to do it. More importantly, for it to be right for you, it has to be yours.
Break it down into clear manageable pieces.
Set a mission (why you’re doing it), goals (what outcomes you want), projects (the big things you do)(set goals for 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years, and end of life) and actions (the small steps you take to getting your projects done)(detail your 1 year next actions list) for your creative life. You’ll have one mission, several goals, many projects, and innumerable actions.
Align your creative mission with your life’s mission.
Most people need at least two missions; one for their life in general (which includes many things – health, family, finances, etc) and one for a specific area, like their career or creative life, which may or many not be the same. Make sure that your missions share something in common – something other than yourself. The more you can align the them, the more likely you are to achieve them, increase your productivity, and be more fulfilled.
Set priorities.
Set timelines.
Chart your progress.
Be flexible.
Update your plan.
A plan is a work in progress. The best plans are flexible and can be modified. If I don’t learn something new from a process, often something that shifts my perspective significantly enough to start doing something better than before, then I feel I haven’t truly excelled at what I’m doing. I expect to improve my plans.
The time you spend clarifying why you’re doing what you’re doing and what you’d like to see come of it will save you hours, months, even years by ensuring that you’re going in the right direction – a direction of your own choosing. When you make a plan, you take control of your life.
Read the extended version in AfterCapture.
Read more in my essay Developing Personal Projects.
Read more in my Creativity lessons.
Learn more in my Creativity workshops.

Using Visual Metaphors

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Here’s an excerpt from my column in the current issue of AfterCapture magazine.
“In photography, metaphors are visual rather than verbal. Different kinds of connections and transferences of shared qualities are made more easily with visual language than with verbal language. Relationships that can be seen but not easily put into words may become clear to the viewer. The echo of compositional elements, such as line, shape, texture, or color, between two (or more) draws a connection between two things that ordinarily might seem unrelated. Quite often, visual metaphors are not the echo of things already existing in the image, but instead offer specific reminders of things that are not in the image.
Interestingly, visual metaphors are rarely as direct as verbal metaphors. When you read a metaphor like, “Your love is a fire that burns me,” it’s crystal clear what metaphor is being used. You read fire and see it in your mind’s eye. Visual metaphors are often less obvious and more suggestive. If a shadow suggests the shape of an animal, it may not be definitively clear which animal it is, rather than a specific animal, it may be animalistic. Consequently, visual metaphors may be subject to multiple interpretations and this may or may not be a good thing. Visual metaphors may not be recognized consciously, but if they’re present, they are always felt.
We use metaphors to invest things with heightened emotion, qualify our responses to them, and produce insight. You can use metaphors to guide you deeper into a subject and your relationship with the subject. This works best if you truly connect mentally and emotionally with the subject and the metaphors you choose. Once you’ve identified the subjects and metaphors you react to most strongly, nurture your connection with and understanding of them. Free association, amplification, contemplation, and gestation help. You’ll find that internal processes are just as important as the external processes. They are what provide the inner life to your creative endeavors.
Metaphors can transform a commonplace perspective into an exceptional one. They can enrich your life. And you, in turn, can enrich ours.”
Find more online resources in my Creativity Lessons.
Learn more creative techniques in my Illuminating Creativity workshops.

Variations

Creativity, Creativity - Storytelling, Magazine  Comment
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Here’s an excerpt from my article in the current issue of After Capture magazine.
“Once you’ve identified the core concerns, strengths, and weaknesses a body of work your path becomes clearer. Stick to your strong points; repeat them. Eliminate or minimize weaknesses. Introduce small variations of less essential items to add life, complexity, and nuances to the work. Enrich text with subtext. Make a list of possible variations upon the elements that you’ve identified. Consider, different points of view and different combinations of elements. Keep adding to your list as time goes on. It’s likely you’ll generate many more ideas than you can accomplish in a short time. With these options in mind you’ll never run out of ideas to pursue. Pursue only the very best ideas; let the lesser ideas pass you by. How do you evaluate new ideas? Ask yourself some questions. How much repetition leads to saturation (adding more information without adding anything new)? How much variation can you support without losing track of the essential idea and starting a new one? Does including a variation reinforce or distract from the entire body of work and its theme? If it reinforces it, include it. If it distracts from it, set it aside for another use. Quite often these images can start new bodies of work. They can even serve as bridges between related bodies of work. Engaging this process consciously increases the likelihood that you will produce the more significant results both now and in the future. You’ll know what to move forward on and when to move forward. You’ll know what to defer and when to defer it so you don’t get sidetracked …”
Find my PDFs on Creativity here.
Learn these and other core concepts in my workshops.