Creative pancakes

We misunderstand how the creative process works. We hear stories of great artists creating in a flash during a lightning storm of inspiration, and think we just need to wait for the right moment to come to us. 

When we do this, one of two unproductive things happens. 

First, we wait for the inspiration, waiting to get struck by a creative impulse, but it never comes. We see other people creating things, and think it’s cool, but never have an intense moment of inspiration ourselves. This happens for a while until, one day, we draw this terrible conclusion: I’m not creative. 

The second unproductive thing that happens when we sit and wait around for creative inspiration is that when it finally comes, we aren’t ready. We have a great idea, and we can see it in our minds, but we aren’t able to execute on it. Our tools aren’t ready, our stamina isn’t built up, and we don’t have skills or technique to create what we want to create. When this happens, we draw another terrible conclusion: I’m not good at this.

But there is a third way. There’s a method that artists and creatives have used for centuries to try new things, hone their skills, and get creative work finished. It’s called “creating every day.” When we create every day, we get a little bit better every day. We try techniques that serve us later. We test little ideas that become meaningful later. 

This process is how I wrote first book. In 2018, I decided I wanted to write a book. The trouble was, I hadn’t written very much at that point, and I only had a vague notion of what I wanted the book to be about. So I tried to write the book, wrote a few pages, and then lost momentum. Instead of drawing the conclusion that “I’m not creative” or “I’m not good at this,” I tried a different approach. I tried creating every single day. I wrote 30 blogs in 30 days in 2018. I wrote 60 in 60 days in 2019. I wrote 100 in 100 days in 2020, and I wrote every single day in 2021. By the time I wrote my first book in 2023, I had published over 600 individual blog posts. Many of those blog posts went on to be the basis for the chapters in my book. 

I tell you this story to prove that the creative inspiration is not a lightning bolt that you’re lucky to have hit you. It’s a daily cooking and stacking of pancakes, until your pancake stack of creative ideas is a mile high, and you know just as well as anyone how to make a great pancake.