Journaling About Creativity, Design, and Collaboration: 17. Analytic Eye to Follow Signals

Continuing this series, where I share one page and transcription of a handwritten journal entry.

Analytic Eye to Follow Signals

Page 17

Notice what you find pulling your attention.

Then ask why.

Is it the message, the way you see it presented.

Ask why again.

You have an opportunity to become more fluent

in experiences and media that matter to you

and simultaneously

learn about your own values

which provides symbols and patterns

for your own stories.

Brief reaction to transcribing this page.

This is all about asking yourself what just happened any time you want to learn why something is affecting you. You could feel the fire of victory as a protagonist believes in themselves, pride when you see hard earned skill recognized on screen, or revulsion when someone shows their lack of integrity and poor mentorship. That's when you can get a lot of creative insight by first noticing someone's art affecting you. Then after that if you ask why and investigate how it is working on you to make you feel as you do, you learn about the art and yourself. For me, that's when I realize I'm watching Karate Kid for the 100th time.

Seriously though I've learned a lot about creative process and storytelling working with Jerzy Drozd. He's the one in my mind that coined this phrase applied to creativity and storytelling. We do a podcast about personal and professional development for visual storytellers. He does another fantastic show called Four Million Years Later with his friend Hoover where there's so much analytic eye you'll learn a ton about storytelling as they discuss the Transformers generation one series.