process of progress

I wrote the manicure yesterday and while reviewing it noticed that it was a little long and lacked any punch. I thought I might rearrange the parts and add new things and use the manicure as a vehicle for the story rather than the final scene. But I'm new to writing and I wanted to run it by my friend Carl who is very good at critique. He thought I should use the manicure more too, or hang the story around it, so I figure if we both were thinking that, it might not be a bad direction to explore.

I thought about the reworking of the story some more. I wondered what parts I could add and what to subtract. I felt a little embarrassed for showing it to Carl in such a "diary" style. But then I realized that I wouldn't be able to move on to the newer idea if I'd never written the diary entry. The diary entry was a necessary step in the creative writing process for me. I wouldn't be able to sit back and rearrange the parts, because there wouldn't be any! So viva la diary!

I got to thinking about something I heard Mick Jagger say about his process of writing songs. He said that he writes the prose first. In other words, he comes up with the story, writes it and then extracts the poetry for the song lyric. How wonderful. Why didn't I ever understand this before? I always thought what he said was interesting, but never thought to try to apply it to my creative process.

Then I started thinking about painting and visual art making. I thought that the process I used for writing this new version of manicure could be applied to my art. I basically just make the first version of the piece and that is why I am frustrated. I need to extract from the first experience of the piece something to take to a second iteration. I owe a lot of this to Carl. He told me paintings should be a unique story, my own version of a story. I just want to paint a painting. That was the first insight he gave me. Now there is this one about the process. He seems to understand the creative process very well, even though he claims it is very painful for him to endure. I'm grateful for his candor and all the help and insight he has given me into all my creative expression.

Now I can read the next chapter in Bird by Bird.