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Now that you have a seed worth exploring, you are ready for step 2 of the creative process. The goal of this phase is explosive growth, following your curiosity out from the seed in every direction.

You’ve heard of the shitty first draft? It’s a nice sentiment, writing full shitty drafts without fear or judgment, but I think you can do even better:

Write shitty piles of shit, and leave the drafting for later.

the rear end of a steer
I often refer to this as the fertilizer or bullshit stage.

Drafting is an organizational problem. You can’t organize ideas you don’t have. Start by exploring and playing and wondering, free from fear and judgment, but also free from purpose, organization, and planning.

Don’t start with outlines. Don’t start with drafts. Start with curiosity.

A Shitty Shopping List

Our goal is to develop all the raw (shitty) materials we will need in order to start drafting. I’m not talking about pen & paper, or computers, or three cans of latex paint. I want to know what concepts, phrases, images, and aesthetics I am working with. I want to soak up inspirations, and understand my constraints.

The Posture of Contour by James Belflower
Final cover design for The Posture of Contour

I start with three questions:

  1. What already exists?
  2. What still needs to be gathered or created?
  3. What will inspire me?

Working on the book cover for The Posture of Contour, I asked the publishers and author for everything they had. Based on their answers, I ended up with these lists:

What already exists?

What still needs to be gathered or created?

What will inspire me?

They had done most of my work for me. That’s not always the case, but if you have a seed, you have enough to get started.

Sparking Curiosity

Collage of labeled animal diagrams
Bodies. A diagram.

The seed I developed in phase 1 can be used directly to start a list of materials in phase 2. Unlike the cover art, this project has no pre-existing material that I am required to use. Most of the material will have to be found or created, but I do have plenty of inspiration to draw from:

What already exists?

What do I still need?

What’s the inspiration?

It’s OK that this list isn’t complete, it’s enough to make me curious, and enough to point me in the right direction.

Coming Soon

In the next few posts we’ll talk about gathering vs creating, blind variation and selective retention, judgmental brainstorming, the viewpoints, and composition — all useful tools for this explosive curiosity phase.