One Creative Process 12, Deciding

This deciding-making step was sometimes easy. Sometimes it was really hard. We usually had 25-30 ideas from which to pick. Now, we had to choose. It was pretty easy to get down to a handful, but it was harder to get to THE idea.

As I mentioned last time, there were some planning cycles where we'd walk into this 2nd meeting knowing what "the" idea for a series was. There were also a few when we'd just sort of start over. But usually we'd just cross off the bad ideas until we were left with 2-5 really viable options.

The voice of our pastor was large in this conversation. If the "packaging" was in any way disconnected from his subject matter, we had to pitch it... even if it would be the coolest thing ever. I'm glad we stuck to our guns there.

Sometimes an idea would be something we'd prefer to do but we just didn't have the time, the personnel, or the money to do it. But these were few and far between. I had the most amazingly resourceful people on my teams. We almost never had money to spend, but we all had basements, garages and friends with the same.

This meeting was also a key part of our creative process because we started putting flesh and bones on the skeletal idea. Song ideas would emerge. If drama was a part of the vision, we would spend some time fleshing out story lines. This is the meeting where we'd determine if we wanted to invite a guest artist--painter, sculptor, potter, etc.

If you've ever created anything on your own, you can imagine the delight in this stage. It isn't just an idea anymore but it is starting to take on substance. In child development I'd think of this stage like when a baby starts to have personality. It's just fun!

I'd also say this was the most difficult stage to get through. It felt like work. It wasn't as filled with hilarity as brainstorming or as gratifying as design. But our first glimpses of the God-activity we would envision often emerged here too.

I may be projecting a bit. By personality, I'm not fond of decision-making. I like gathering input and generating ideas more than making decisions. But they needed to be made and I am grateful for teams that helped me decide well.

There it is... another reason to work in teams. 

Next time? The nuts and bolts start coming together.