“I have a picture in my mind, or maybe a thought I got obsessed with – and I want to slide it in your head. But the complicated question is – how do I do that?”
I’ve never wished for telepathy to be more real than when I had to share creative thoughts or convey an idea.
The creative process is simple
You daydream, you find your flickering muse, or get inspired by something that gave you goosebumps.
You imagine a blurred picture. It’s in your head. You craft words to convey it. Then, you approach other creatives – you want them to see it the way you saw it.
… and that’s when it gets complicated
No matter how sharp your showmanship or how jaw-dropping your whiteboard artistry is – your ideas get diluted and misread.
Firstly, they barely reach your listener. And when they do, they just fleetingly swoosh by. Only some sink in your readers’ brains.
The ideas that you were embracing dearly some time ago are picked, judged, curated, tested, felt, and given an opinion about within seconds.
Boom!
If you successfully slip your heart’s emotions in their pockets, and if they’re understood, you win.
Or the rest of the time, you just scroll down as people around you stare at the projector until all your ideas are glazed over and the slideshow ends.
Painful.
It seems tough because it is
Communication isn’t that easy.
Married couples quarrel. Innocent people land up in prisons. Scientific theories get rejected. Because communication doesn’t end up doing what it was supposed to do.
Why?
Because words that are said aren’t always perceived or understood the way that they’re meant to.
Creative interactions are no different
Creativity isn’t just about coming up with ideas but also about conveying them with brevity. It’s about selling ideas so that they shear your listeners’ minds like a sniper bullet.
Dissolving people’s doubts, turning the listener’s skepticism into optimism – it requires us to act like we’re in showbusiness sometimes. Maybe we are, in a way.
If you give birth to an idea, it’s up to you to take accountability for it until that fragment of imagination meets its destiny. As I mentioned above, a tough job. And I’m still learning.