MY CREATIVE PROCESS

My creative process varied from day-to-day. The first step was to complete archival research on bipolar disorder. I wanted my portrayal to be accurate when depicting manic and depressive episodes. Next, I focused on film research. That included watching many coming-of-age films who I wanted to take inspiration from, and taking notes on the film and its screenplay 

When writing, it seems like you're trying to capture lightning in a bottle. When are you feeling creative? Sometimes, the times when you feel ready to write are the most inconvenient times, and the times when you need to write are when no ideas are flowing to you. Early on, I had the story for Sophomore in my head. Putting it to paper was another story. I had to deal not only with writer's block, but with my surprisingly busy schedule and a host of personal issues. This made finding time to write when I felt creative difficult. A technique that I discovered while in my Arts Scholars capstone class that proved useful was generating boredom. While that may seem counterintuitive, when your mind is allowed time to be bored, it switches from a mode of "satisfying" to a mode of "seeking", which helps you find new ideas (Bench and Lench, 2019). By allowing myself to be completely bored (an unusual thing for me) right before I started writing, I was able to think on my story and have a productive writing session.