The more that I write, the more I can write. It's confidence building to say this and it's true to a point. To turn my rough drafts and raw writing expression into the right expression that works for me for now takes a process.

A Way to Look at Creative Process

Creative process is a network of change. To turn feeling and idea from formless to forming concept. Then to refine that concept, give it purpose and clarity. From functional form to become a final form, just enough of what it needs to be to share. A creative work can float between any and all of those stages as a whole or in parts. To keep it moving is the process of working within that network of change.

I feel more skilled in some parts, partially from having fewer negative self talk "creative demons" in some parts of the process stages than others. That's probably a separate article, if I do some time travel future edit linking this is a good place to jump to that article, future me.

The Practice of This Blog

What's this blog about anyway? It's about practice.

I shared at the beginning of the month that I'll be publishing 365 posts this year. Complete a thought enough to publish, one for each day of the year. Each post meant to be a combination of service and expression. 11 days, 11 posts and so far no buffer of pre-finished posts scheduled ahead of time.

As a practice I find writing articles to be one of the most freeing and confounding things I create. Freeing in that there's little to be in the way. It's words. Words are in my head all the time mingling with pictures, ideas, goals, puzzles, and feelings. Choose some of those words to put into a document and that's most of the work. At least I wish it were most of the work.

How it works for me in reality, I let some ideas come out into the editor and a whole network of firehoses start spraying related concepts all over the place. It's useful for getting started. It reminds me of free writing with your first thoughts like Natalie Goldberg talks about in Writing Down the Bones.

I get first ideas out until I have about 2-3 times the amount of words I need to make a point. In that pile of words I find new barriers. I look around to find if I spoke from the heart with a sense of purpose. From there I can see if there's something potentially helpful for the reader.

A key skill I'm working to build is getting through the early conceptual phases sooner.

The Meta of this Blog

Early in 2020 I wrote a few articles on my Medium blog. I'm proud for how they turned out.

• Practicing UX: Being There When a Team is Starting Their First Design Journey
• Practicing UX: Being There When a Team is Starting Their First Design Journey
• ‘7 Habits’ Influenced Me as an Emerging UX Designer

Also each took far more time to complete than I would prefer, from 12 to 20 hours each. Here I'm writing articles that are conceptually complete enough and writing them in about 60 to 90 minutes. Sometimes a little faster.

I'm using that as a step to reach into the next work. To write more about UX and creative process and dig deeper into themes I've explored on the Polytechnicast about helping anyone start practicing the tools of UX and especially UX Mindset.

Soon you'll see those topics intermingled with other reflections, illustrations, and projects I'm working on.