Creating A Map To Guide You In Your Creative Project
I’ve worked on widely different creative projects. From the big work of writing a novel, to honing my photography and growing my Instagram account, to building a creative business. Yet there’s one thing I do in every project, that helps me regardless of the specifics of it. It’s something I see helps my coaching clients so much as well.
It’s to create a map for myself. Of course, it’s not an actual map, but I call it that because it helps us navigate and find direction in our creative work. It’s something - a document, a notebook, a vision board - to develop and reference as you go.
In this blog post, I want to share why I think creating a map is so helpful, and how you can get started with one too.
A map to know where you’re going
The journey to making a creative idea happen is often both wonderful and filled with crossroads, stumbling blocks and uncharted territory. For every step forward there are many choices to make, and at every turn you may encounter opinions and reactions, real or imagined.
Along the way, we all encounter doubts, wondering if the idea was so good after all, or if we’re even capable of bringing it to life. I have wondered it many times through all my creative projects.
What brings me back home though is the map, and this is why I think it’s so very helpful. When I contemplate a choice, or feel doubt rising inside me, I go to my notes for the project. I read my own words of why I want to create it, how I want to do it and what I’m trying to achieve. It always settles me.
With a world so full of advice, of other people doing their things, it can be easy to go astray in your creative work. Forget your own vision and lose your direction. That’s when you need your very own map.
Creating your own map
As a person of the written word, I believe there’s a lot of power in writing things down. Not just walking around with that feeling inside of you, those ideas up in your head but get them down on paper.
This uncovering of an idea is what I like to call the groundwork. The most straightforward way is to ask yourself questions about your project. Why is it so compelling to me? What do I love about this work? What is the message I want to send to the world with this? How can I communicate that message? Who’s it for? What makes it stand out?
Exactly which questions are relevant will depend on the project, of course. For my novel, I have documents on everything from theme and story to character development and scenes. In photography, my notes are simple and centers around the overall story I want to tell with it.
Then, when you have written down all your answers, you can consider how you’d most like to check in with your map. Is it to read through all your notes? Or do you want something simpler, perhaps more visual. Lately, I’ve created images with key words and sentences as well as pictures, like small vision boards for different parts of my creative work that I can look at on my phone when I start wavering. Find what works for you and helps you come back to your vision.
When the map isn’t pointing in the right direction anymore
Lastly, I want to make a note on the fact that our maps need to be updated sometimes. There have been times when I’ve turned to my map and instead of the warm, centered feeling I have felt a heaviness in my chest. The “oh right, that’s where I’m going” haven’t been a happy realisation.
Though it might be a journey in itself to arrive to that conclusion, I think those feelings are often a sign your vision has changed. Along the way, you’ve outgrown your map and found a direction that is more true to you.
When that happens, I suggest you open a new document, or a new leaf in your notebook and just write down what a different way might be. Sit with it. Dig deeper into it. What’s it really about? And then, if you come to the conclusion that your map isn’t showing you were you want to go anymore, you change it.
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