Open-Ended Creativity: Step Off The Map (and moo)

I’m often asked where I get my ideas, how I plan my words and images. People want to know how they can get THERE from HERE, dammit, and they’d like a clear cut, 10 step plan to milking their own creativity.

But I only have one step in my creative process: “Don’t Plan.” (Actually, it’s closer to “Make A Plan Then Willfully Ignore It,” but “Don’t Plan” has more punch.)

“Tipping Sacred Cows” is a good illustration of my process. It’s not a great post, but it made at least 3 people laugh hard enough to contact me privately — not a bad thing at all.

Here’s how it went:

A self-imposed deadline loomed on the horizon. I needed, desperately, to get a blog post written. It was a matter of life and death (Ok, well, maybe it wasn’t that serious) but I had a problem… the minute I opened Live Writer, one of my thistle-headaches burst into bloom. Wading through scientific research papers to tackle my planned posts was simply not an option.

Looking over my drafts, “Tipping Sacred Cows” caught my attention. I double clicked the title, opened the file, and saw.. nothing. It was just a title.

Admittedly, it was a clever title… maybe even an especially clever title. But there was nothing written, nothing started, not even a suggestion of where I’d intended it to go.

Out of sheer frustration, I started writing about what a clever title it was. After two sentences or so, an odd mooing started up inside my head (no, I don’t know how a cow got in there) and soon, I’d taken on the roles of both the Sacred Cow and it’s Tipper.

It amused me, so I wrote it.

Then I decided it wasn’t half bad.

After a few paragraphs, I realized not everyone would know what a sacred cow was, much less cow-tipping, so I jotted down the definitions. Once I’d taken that serious educational turn, it only took a few minutes to add a rather boring advice summary, which made it Mind-Tweakable.

I went back, deleted the paragraph about the cleverness of the title, slapped in a few cow photos, and.. Tada.

The resulting post was not even close to my original intentions for the title. It wasn’t related to my first stumbling paragraphs about clever words either. But in the end, it was humorous, insightful, and worthy enough.

The creative process worked, because I was open to wherever the post went. I took an open-ended approach, and followed the flow without a compass, chart, or map.

I just followed the mental-moo-muse.
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MindTWEAK: Put down the creative plans, article templates, and how-to books. Write, paint, dance, draw, or moo without purpose, without a goal. Rivers don’t follow maps. Maps follow rivers.
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(And yes, I promise to stop with the moo-metaphors… maybe.)