First of all, process is a bad word. It's too scientific, too formulaic, too regimented. It's not like you plan out your day, saying I think I'm going to be creative between the hours of two and three this afternoon, and possibly for a fifteen minute period between 5:15 and 5:45. Other than that I'm going to spend the rest of the day reading cereal boxes. It doesn't work that way. I wish it worked that way, it would save me a lot of time and energy staring at blank pieces of paper. But it doesn't.
So I'm going to explain how the creative process works for me. Let's say a job comes down the pipeline, television spot for a burger joint. You have a kick-off meeting in which the creative strategy is laid out for you in plain and simple English. This creative strategy is then pasted up on the wall (either literally of figuratively), and you go about figuring what form of communication is going to best communicate that creative strategy. It is at this point the creative process begins in earnest. Meaning you look at the creative strategy for a good minute and then start surfing the Internet for porn. This is usually followed by a trip out to the kitchen to see if there are any donuts left over from yesterday, an hour or so watching television, a couple hours taking a nap, putting your feet up on the desk, seeing how long you can hold your feet on the desk before the blood rushes from your feet and you can't walk, holding a pad of paper with feet on desk so it looks like you're working when actually you're thinking about if large feet mean anything on a woman. Then you might think of where would be a good place to go to lunch, or where to go for dinner, or where to go for lunch tomorrow, or the day after, who invented lunch, who's idea was it to put ham and pineapple together on pizza, how come I'm not rich, why don't girls like me, if I don't shower for three months will I die. And this goes on for a number of days until usually about 72 hours before the presentation, you say to yourself, Shit, I better get something down on paper. Then you fire up the Internet one more time, sleep another fifteen minutes, check cricket scores, look out the window at least twenty-three times, each time looking more reflective and brooding. Finally, you're ready, it's time to actually write something down, you begin with a word, it's a good word, yes, you feel you've reached the golden creative hour.
L.
OK, so maybe it's only a letter, but that letter took a lot of effort. You need to take a break, get some fresh air, work out, call some strippers, steel beer out of a Bud Light truck, complain about things you have no control over, etc.
Oh look, something shiny.
-J. Jerry Gannon
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