After reading Mindy Kahling's book, Is Everybody Hanging Out Without Me? (which I loved and finished in 2 days), I realized that many of us have inaccurate pictures of how "creative" people work. I always pictured The Office writing team in Jim-like shirts and ties, sitting around a big conference table in a white room, just shooting out jokes at each other, seeing which ones got the loudest laughs and some underling furiously scribbling while the head writers shout, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. I got a good one. What if DWIGHT says, 'I save my hair clippings and weave them into socks,' and then JIM looks at the camera and says, 'You know, I've heard Dep Sport has an incredible wicking quality.' Did you get that down, temp?"
Mindy kind of busts this myth by revealing she does most of her writing alone. She talks about posing for a totally-fake picture of her typing at her computer desk in an immaculate office. In reality, she admits that she mostly uses her office as a messy clothes closet and does most of her typing sitting in bed with a sweatshirt on her lap to prevent "laptop legs."
I thought I'd let you all in on a "backstage pass" into how my creative process works for show choir.
When I first started doing choreography in 1997, I was a sophomore in HS and my parents put huge mirrors in a cement-floored room in the basement with an old Comet wrestling mat. It was awesome, like my own dance studio. I used it to make up show choir moves, but also practiced my cheerleading and dance team. There was low duct work on the ceiling, so I didn't incorporate a lot of moves where my hands had to be straight up!
When I started up again after college, I did an entire song in front of my dresser in our first basement apartment. Not a lot of fancy footwork that year.
In our last house, I again had a great basement setup with a $5 mirror from a garage sale, the CD player I bought with my own money in 6th grade, a dorm carpet, a 13" TV with a VCR and DVD player to review old tapes, and again, low ceilings. This worked great for the 6 years we lived there and was great for taxes because I had a space in my house solely dedicated to this home-based business. :) However, as the years progressed, I found I was spending more and more time just sitting on the couch or floor in the basement, drawing stick people on the music and stage formations in my trusty notebook (wide-ruled, been using for about 7 years to write out placements and to keep track of my billable hours). I did most of my "idea generation" during my commute, so at home I was really just testing it out (without the inconvenience of having to also keep my car on the road) and transferring it to paper.
In our new house, we have way more room and a perfect "dance studio" except it also makes a perfect "toy room", so I'm down to looking at my reflection in the TV (turned off) in the basement. Although, at this point, you are just as likely to find me "choreographing" while sitting in the middle of my bed, eating goldfish crackers and watching Extreme Couponing. Some things get easier with practice and it honestly takes me much longer to draw/write out the instructions to leave behind than anything else.
Well, this might not have been a riveting post, but I feel like we're getting really crowded with "look at my kid, he's cute posts" and needed to "jazz it up."
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