Chaos first; creation coming up.
The only way to create anything is to organize it
out of a mess. I’m sure this is not a new theory. I had reference books,
papers, dictionaries, library tomes, pets, scraps of paper, shreds of notes
crinkled up and strewn all over the bed, with my husband’s photos and layouts
balancing precariously from the nearby drawing board.
We really got inside our work, together. Sometimes yelling at each other to make our
point. Criticism occasionally showing
it’s face with a curt: “that stinks!”
But for the most part, agreeing and encouraging; on each other’s side,
each other’s best critic and even better supporter. Filling in when creative gaps appear, shoring
up, honing and enhancing our respective crafts:
graphic design, photography and copywriting. It was sweet.
Then to see the finished product, hold it in your
hands, view it, read it. Deliver it to
the client and feel the kind of praise that comes from doing something really
well. And being appreciated for doing
so. That’s what it means when you look forward to your work.
And if it’s good work and it’s really going well,
and you’re really immersed in it with everything you’re working toward humming
along. Then suddenly you’re plugged into
a kind of Universal Switchboard. And the
work is easy, you can’t type fast enough for the words keep flowing, coming,
gushing. It’s as if the work already
exists in a completed form and you’re able through skill, ability, age,
tenacity, luck, whatever it is, you are able to plug in and retrieve that
work. That’s how composers have been known
to hear whole symphonies all at once in their minds’ ears. Because for the composer the notes are
already there. Because for the writer
the words already exist. Because for the artist the picture has already been
drawn.
I’m not talking about plagiarism here, and I hope to
goodness that some monk in the 15th century hasn’t already come up with this
theory and had it copyrighted in Latin.
Available in : A Quick Read: Short-Short Stories
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