The Creative Process, for me, is like solving a puzzle of my own devising without knowing what the solution looks like, or even what all the pieces are. It’s a dynamic event of serendipitous happenings mixed with guided problem solving. The first step is always the same, the end result always unique, and the path between the two unmapped, untrodden, unexplored. The Creative Process is always an act of self-discovery that I actively participate in and let happen by it’s own pace and methodology at the same time.

Every creation is a work of magic: Something from nothing. A journey into the collective Super-Consciousness. And every journey begins the same, not with the first step, but with An Idea.

STEP ONE: Sowing Seeds
I recently watched a couple of episodes of the animate He-Man series from the 80’s online. It was a childhood favorite of mine, that still holds lots of memories. Viewing it now I could tell immediately that it did not hold up over the years. It was clumsy story-telling, lazy animation, obtuse plotlines centering on the deranged yammerings of a skeletal madman… and yet, there was something there. I was fascinated by the feel of it; the strange, inexplicable mix of science and sorcery. The stunningly unique background paintings intrigued me with a sense of lost civilizations, and a distant future that was so far out it seemed like the past, and there it was: A kernel. A seed. And Idea.

I’ve never been one to hang long on the fantasy of “someday I’ll get to write for so and so”, therefore I quickly put away the concept of writing a He-Man revival. I’d not let the idea itself parish though. To skirt the legality of copyright and publishing issues, I would take the IDEA, and wrap it in my own universe. I set the idea into my sub-conscious and let it lay for awhile. I carried the vaguest of concepts in my forebrain: “Science & Sorcery”, and let the undercurrents of my mind work their magic.

One could simply end there and do there own version of He-Man - which is in itself a rendition of Savage Myths of Men whore are more than mere mortal, from Conan the Barbarian all the way back to the mythological text of earliest man. Ah, and then Conan came to mind, and the second phase of creation could begin.

STEP TWO: Inspiration Observation
This the step where I innundate myself in the subject matter at hand. If I were writing science fiction, I would begin reading every cheap paperback sci-fi novel I could find, watching re-runs of Doctor Who, reading Science websites and blogs, picking up issues of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN and WIRED, watching my favorite sci-fi movies, and whatever else came up during that process that might seem unrelated at the time. In this case, with “Science & Sorcery” it was hitting ebay and buying a bunch of Conan Comic books, researching secret societies, watching more He-Man and looking at the creative process of the original toys and marketing campaign of the Masters of the Universe that had captivated me as a young boy through web research. Step two is about flooding your mind with possibilities.

And STEP THREE is about forgetting all of what you did in Step two.
Step Three is where the magic really happens. Let the ideas simmer in the sub-conscious again. And like a newly forming brain, connections are created automatically; new synapses are firing now, transferring signals all their own. The Concept will begin to percolate to the surface when it is ready, forcing portions of itself, newly formed, up into the conscious mind.

I now knew my story took place in world of Sorcery, a new hyperborean age, millions of years in a future earth or earth-like planet. The only technology was found technology, left behind by a race of Scholars long dead. The idea of scholars, an group of alien entities cataloging knowledge reminds me of the H.P. Lovecraft story “Shadow out of time” and I make a mental note to pull in some Dark God references.

My hero, I now knew, was of a particular genetic line, his DNA was encoded in a particular form of Lost Technology that could only be activated by him, as the last survivor of his bloodline. This became a sub-conscious expression of my conscious desire too put a spin on cliched story elements such as “the Chosen One” syndrome of so much good and bad fiction. Which tied into an idea I’d been carrying around for some years form an unrelated story I never finished. The Concept of ancient computers called GUDRUN (”God’s Secret Knowledge”, from German origin), which were repositories of knowledge - this would be the device my hero would have to activate.
To do what? I don’t know yet.

I’ll figure that out in the next step.

M