The creative process is different for every creative. At times, it’s ecstatic and otherworldly.

Other times it is not.

Inspiration is fickle and very much has a life of its own. The successful outcome of a big project requires the careful cultivation of the fertile seed bed of inspiration in its early stages.

For some, inspiration is as easy as putting on a magical gauntlet, rending the heavens and pulling down a golden bag of ideas. It's usually not like that for me.

I was once asked what my creative process looked like. I thought long and hard about it.

Let me tell you what it is like.

It is much more like going into the wilderness. I hope it’s not for that long, but I never know. While in exile, I am hunting ideas. I am turning over rocks, unearthing relics and artifacts, digging ditches, cutting down underbrush. All the while this crazed hellhound called a deadline is hunting me.

Haunting me.

Time goes by.

The Darkness sets in.

It’s night now. It’s cold.

I’ve been cast into the wilderness. The dead of night.

There I crouch in a fetal position.

Vulnerable. Exposed. Desperate.

Suddenly, I hear something. I hear something vile. Like an insane, mocking chortle coming from an unseen direction.

I’m frozen. Paralyzed with fear. I feel a single bead of nervous sweat trickle from my right armpit down to the small of my back.

I smell the dank, nauseating halitosis emanating from some unholy creature preparing to take my life. It’s the moist, warm stench of some subhuman animal of ages past breathing down my neck and there’s no escape.

It’s the deadline.

I take what I believe to be my last breath. I turn around slowly expecting to meet my untimely demise.

I exhale and my body goes limp with solace and other worldly joy. To my amazement, it’s not a salivating, blood thirsty, unholy archfiend preparing to murder me after all.

The night is gone. The sun has risen and there before me stands a backlit baby unicorn inviting me to love him.

Inspiration has come.

Let the day burst forth.

Now.

You.

Go forth. Take up your mantle, and make RAD stuff.