off. dead. neglected. take a nap.
and
ON FULL BLAST BALLS TO THE WALL CAN'TSTOPTHINKINGOFAWESOMEIDEAS!!!!!
Pretty much nothing in between.
Currently, I'm in the middle of the "ON" stage, where my mind cruises at full speed coming up with new shots, ideas, concepts, campaigns, and so on. I can't turn it off and I wouldn't even if I could - but it does tend to make things a little hectic.
If I tried to actively pursue every idea that came to me during this "ON" stage, I would find myself switching gears every 5 minutes and starting a new project that would ultimately die an unfortunate and unfinished death. Nothing gets done at all that way and it feels a lot like this:
image courtesy of fugly.com
Instead, I have to record the ideas that I think are worth going after, and save them for later. Tackling one idea at a time means that I can get a little boost of creative juice even when my muse is doing a Garfield impersonation.
image courtesy of ebonyink.wordpress.com
I have several methods at my disposal to record fun ideas/projects/whatever for later use. Right now I'm using a combination of my giant whiteboard, my sketch book, and the ToDo app in my phone. Eventually every good (and not so good) idea I have gets written down somewhere for later use. I might rediscover it next week or a year from now, but eventually I'll come back to it.
The tough part is choosing which project to pursue first. I need to decide how long it will take me to complete, whether I have the necessary knowledge and equipment to get it done, things like that.
Right now I'm working on getting some interior images of a hotel that's agreed to give me full reign and total access. After that I'm doing to do a fashion/modeling shoot in the same hotel, and then I'll move on to a special project for the dreamTrip. During/in between, I'll be shooting cars.
Technically I'm taking one thing at a time - but I'm going to do all that in the next 5 days, plus shooting basketball and track for work. It doesn't really *feel* like one thing at a time... but technically I suppose it is.
Do you have a way to manage your creative spurts? Let me know in the comments below!
