Visualizing the Creative Process

I've been a "creative" person my whole life---I've created multimedia dance performances, co-created site specific theater productions, won a citywide poetry competition, accompanied world famous musicians with my video projected animation, created animated and live action videos, created comics, performed standup comedy, told stories accompanied by my hand drawn illustrations, hosted interactive video talk shows, helped make an award winning radio show, and of course in my current work, I turn conversations into illustrated info murals. But what drives creativity? And what techniques and approaches are helpful to people who make creative work? I'm diving into a stack of creativity books right now, and I'm translating what I read into sketch notes to help me remember and understand them better. The notes above are from a couple of chapters of Bird by Bird, the excellent book on writing by Annie Lamott. Other books on my list include The Creative Habit, by choreographer Twyla Tharp and Creativity by psychologist Csikszentmihalyi Mihaly.

Whatever sketchnotes I create are by no means meant to be comprehensive, or a replacement for reading the book. But they help me recall, understand, and assimilate the ideas in the books better. I'll keep posting these as I make them.