THE SYNCREATE PODCAST: EMPOWERING CREATIVITY
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY, AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY, AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
EPISODE 24: CREATIVE PLANNING
WITH Melinda Rothouse & Charlotte Gullick
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO EPISODE HERE:
WATCH THE FULL VIDEO VERSION HERE:
In this episode of our Creative Spark series, Melinda and Charlotte describe the Plan, or organizational, phase of the creative process. The word “plan” might not immediately come to mind when we think about creativity, but planning and organization are actually vital to bringing a creative idea to the world. We discuss how convergent and divergent thinking figure into the creative process, as well as the importance of setting creative goals and milestones. We also share personal examples of how planning allows us to move forward with our creative work in a productive way, along with insights and prompts from our book, Syncreate: A Guide to Navigating the Creative Process for Individuals, Teams, and Communities.
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, we focus on accountability partnership, where we enlist the help of a friend, colleague, or collaborator to help hold us accountable to our creative goals. Accountability partnerships can be formal or informal, but they afford us that extra bit of extrinsic motivation to move forward with our work. Accountability partnerships are a powerful way to boost our creative output.
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about the creative process, you might also like our conversations in Episode 7: The Syncreate Story with Syncreate Co-Founder Charlotte Gullick, Episode 20: The Syncreate Model of Play, Plan & Produce and Episode 22: Creative Play.
At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors, so if you have an idea for a project or a new venture, please reach out to us for 1x1 coaching or join our Syncreate 2024 Coaching Group, starting in April. So you can find more information on our website, syncreate.org, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. Find and connect with us on YouTube, LinkedIn, FB, Insta & Tiktok under Syncreate, and we’re now on Patreon as well. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!
For our Creativity Pro-Tip, we focus on accountability partnership, where we enlist the help of a friend, colleague, or collaborator to help hold us accountable to our creative goals. Accountability partnerships can be formal or informal, but they afford us that extra bit of extrinsic motivation to move forward with our work. Accountability partnerships are a powerful way to boost our creative output.
Credits: The Syncreate podcast is created and hosted by Melinda Rothouse, and produced at Record ATX studios with in collaboration Michael Osborne and 14th Street Studios in Austin, Texas. Syncreate logo design by Dreux Carpenter.
If you enjoy this episode and want to learn more about the creative process, you might also like our conversations in Episode 7: The Syncreate Story with Syncreate Co-Founder Charlotte Gullick, Episode 20: The Syncreate Model of Play, Plan & Produce and Episode 22: Creative Play.
At Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors, so if you have an idea for a project or a new venture, please reach out to us for 1x1 coaching or join our Syncreate 2024 Coaching Group, starting in April. So you can find more information on our website, syncreate.org, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. Find and connect with us on YouTube, LinkedIn, FB, Insta & Tiktok under Syncreate, and we’re now on Patreon as well. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review!
EPISODE-SPECIFIC HYPERLINKS:
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate, a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. Our goal is to demystify the creative process and expand the boundaries of what it means to be creative. I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life.
Charlotte: Hi. And I'm Charlotte Gullick, and I am a writer, educator and editor, and I co-create many things with Melinda.
Melinda: All right. We're back. And for this mini-episode, we're going to be talking about the second stage in our Syncreate process, which is Plan. And maybe at first glance, that doesn't sound very sexy or exciting. I mean, creativity is all about exploration, and as we've talked about in our previous session, but actually it does require planning.
So we talk a lot about sort of divergent thinking, which is coming up with new ideas, making connections between seemingly unrelated things. But creativity does also involve convergence, which is where we narrow down ideas, and we focus, and we get things done. And in order to bring any project to completion, we actually have to be able to do both.
And that's why we felt that talking about planning is actually a very important piece of our model. So Charlotte, tell us a little bit more about what that involves.
Charlotte: Well, I just want to acknowledge what you said that, like, you know, when someone says plan, you're like, I'm not necessarily creatively aroused.
Melinda: Exactly! [Laughter] Right.
Charlotte: Well…it's so, so, so important. And I'm thinking right now, okay, so I have a book that I'm working on, a collection of essays. And I queried four agents, and I had an agent say, I'd like to see the whole book. And with book proposals, you don't necessarily have the whole book together. So basically he said, “Plan it out, show it to me.” And I hadn't gotten that far.
And it was so thrilling because while not every piece is written, I got to think about the order in which things appear. You know, we were (this is showing our age) when we were younger, you would make a mixtape for someone you were dating, and you had to be Mixmaster McFly and get it just right, the highs, the lows. So it brought forth that kind of vibe like, oh, what is the emotional tenor that I want to strike?
Melinda: Nowadays it's called a playlist, by the way.
Charlotte: Oh, ok, thank you. Now I know I can talk to the younger generation. [Laughter] “I made you a tape!” But I'm just thinking, like that absolutely, the planning of it was thrilling because it allowed me to take it more seriously. And also, the really cool thing is, I did not know this: I have 14 essays planned for this book, and many of them are written, and four of them ended with the word enough.
Melinda: Interesting
Charlotte: In the last line.
Melinda: And what do you make of that?
Charlotte: I think it's about, like, seeing that like in this moment what I have is plenty, but it's so interesting that so many ended with that. So I adjusted because I didn't want them all to end the same. But then it made me wonder if that was the name of the collection.
Melinda: Enough.
Charlotte: So yeah. Or This is Enough. So I just think that I resist planning, or I did a lot more when I was younger, but now I've come to see its incredible that value in me taking an idea that I have and that I play with and then bring it to share to others. I can't do it if I don't plan.
Melinda: Yes, absolutely. And you know it makes me think about, well, how we worked together to write our book. And so just to break it down a little bit more, like what does planning actually involve? It involves like perhaps making a map, like you did in the example you just gave. Like if we're submitting a book proposal, or a grant proposal, or a proposal to do any sort of project, we do have to kind of think through: what is the structure, how is this going to work, what's the budget, all these kinds of things.
And so we create a map of the process. Maybe it's a visual representation, maybe it's an outline. You know, however your brain works, you know, there's not one way to go about it. But it also involves all these fun things, like deadlines and milestones, and saying, okay, if I'm going to write a book and I know it's going to be 200 pages long, and I want to get it done in a year, well, how many pages do I need to write each month, each week, each day? And then we can develop a practice around that.
Charlotte: I think there's a phrase that people are using quite a bit with neurodivergence, and I think that really applies here, is how will your future self thank you? And so you're planning for that future self to be grateful to you for putting the steps into place. I did want to note that in our book, we do offer a Project Timeline where we actually break it down for you, and help you if it's something that you're not familiar with. And I believe you can email us and get a free template.
Melinda: Yes, you certainly can. Just find us on syncreate dot org and we will send you a free Project Planning Template that you can use for any of your creative projects.
So just to share a little more about how we actually wrote the book, because it was, you know, writing a book is not a quick process by any means. It often takes years, and that was the case for us. Once we started putting our ideas to paper, we took some time in our weekly meetings, and did a couple of retreats where we took a longer chunk of time and we got to a working draft of the book pretty much around the time the pandemic arrived.
Charlotte: Well, it's interesting because we had set a goal, I think by maybe August of 2020 to have a full draft. And then we like, what do we do now? We can't meet. But yeah, we found a way.
Melinda: We did. So we were meeting on the phone and working in a Google document, and once we had our draft complete, we went back in our mostly one-hour-a-week meetings, and went through and revised the entire book together.
Charlotte: Sentence by sentence.
Melinda: Yeah. Yes. And once we got to really refining phase, like literally sentence by sentence. And that's one way to work. It's not the only way to collaborate. I've heard of other people just saying, “You take this chapter, I'll take that chapter.” And you know, and we did that initially, but then we traded off, and picked up where the other left off, and blended it so completely that sometimes I can tell who wrote what and sometimes I can't, actually.
Charlotte: Well, if it's a sentence that has a lot of extra words, I probably wrote it. [Laughter]
Melinda: And then we edited.
Charlotte: Yeah, because we're documenting our own best processes, right?
Melinda: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So it was a really awesome collaboration. And, you know, we utilized the time and resources we had, which were not a lot. Like, we both have full lives and other going on and it was the pandemic and, and all of this. But you know, we talk a lot about incremental progress, right. And it just doesn't mean you just hole yourself up for three months and you do the whole thing. Maybe some people do that and that's great. That's not how we did it, because it wouldn't have been feasible for us to do it that way. But by setting a goal, and having milestones and deadlines for ourselves, we able to complete this book through a series of weekly meetings over several years.
Charlotte: And I would also add that we used the process itself, right? We played, then we planned, and then we produced. And then on the day-to-day level we would say, “Do you feel convergent, or do you feel divergent today?” And if it was a day that we didn't feel divergent, we'd go and edit. Or if it was a day where we felt like we could be generative.
So we actually used the process. And I think the other thing that's really cool about our book, that we have talked a lot about, is that it creates a shared language for creativity. And that's really important. So as we break it down into approachable tasks.
Melinda: Absolutely. And that's another thing that we encourage people to reflect on, like what is your own creative process? Because again, there's not just one way to go about things. And so we can't tell you like, “This is how you have to do it.” But what I always tell my clients and students is figure out the way that works for you. And once you figure out what that is, then you'll be able to do it the next time and the next time, right? So you don't have to reinvent the wheel each time. Yeah.
So that brings us, I think, nicely to our Creativity Pro-Tip for this session, which is around accountability partnership.
Charlotte: So with accountability partnership, it may sound really formal, but it's actually not. It's identifying someone in your life who will gently and firmly say, “Hey, how's that going?” And so you can do the reverse, so that you both can help hold each other accountable for projects that you want to get done. So like right now, I have one with someone that works at Vassar. She really wants to write. And I said, “So when should I check in with you about that?” And she said, “By December 31st.” So I have an email, or a note in my calendar, to email her to say, “How's it going?” So it's really pretty easy and it can be very, very powerful.
Melinda: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And that could look like a formal, you know, coaching partnership; that could look like a colleague who's working in a similar or different medium. Like I've heard of people, again during the pandemic, you know, just doing a Zoom session, and they both write, or they both work on their project for an hour on Zoom separately, but together.
Or it could just be a regular check-in weekly, monthly, whatever it is. But, you know, just having somebody who you can have some external accountability around your work, so that you sometimes that's helpful. We can be accountable to ourselves, and sometimes that gets a little tricky because life is busy and things get in the way. But we know we're kind of reporting into someone, that can be really helpful.
Charlotte: And just a quick, like I think sometimes people feel like, well, the real artists don't have accountability partners. But what were the salons, you know, where people gathered at the end of the day or every week to check in. Of course, they're socializing, but they're also they have people to report to. So it's actually, there's a tradition of this that we can lean into if we want.
Melinda: Absolutely. So at Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. So if you have an idea for a project or a new venture, please reach out to us for 1x1 coaching or join our Syncreate 2024 Coaching Group.
Charlotte: Which we're really excited to be offering. This will be a small group of folks who identify a project and take it through its process, and we meet regularly to check in and be inspired.
Melinda: Yeah, so we'll be walking you through the model that we've been talking about in these mini-sessions of Play, Plan and Produce. So you can find more on our website, syncreate.org, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. We’re on social media as well under Syncreate, and we are on YouTube. We are releasing our episodes both in audio and video on YouTube, so find us and connect.
And we are recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin, and with Charlotte in the Hudson Valley. So glad to have you with me on this new endeavor of our Creative Spark episodes. And the podcast is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios. So, thanks so much for being with us and we'll see you next time.
Charlotte: Hi. And I'm Charlotte Gullick, and I am a writer, educator and editor, and I co-create many things with Melinda.
Melinda: All right. We're back. And for this mini-episode, we're going to be talking about the second stage in our Syncreate process, which is Plan. And maybe at first glance, that doesn't sound very sexy or exciting. I mean, creativity is all about exploration, and as we've talked about in our previous session, but actually it does require planning.
So we talk a lot about sort of divergent thinking, which is coming up with new ideas, making connections between seemingly unrelated things. But creativity does also involve convergence, which is where we narrow down ideas, and we focus, and we get things done. And in order to bring any project to completion, we actually have to be able to do both.
And that's why we felt that talking about planning is actually a very important piece of our model. So Charlotte, tell us a little bit more about what that involves.
Charlotte: Well, I just want to acknowledge what you said that, like, you know, when someone says plan, you're like, I'm not necessarily creatively aroused.
Melinda: Exactly! [Laughter] Right.
Charlotte: Well…it's so, so, so important. And I'm thinking right now, okay, so I have a book that I'm working on, a collection of essays. And I queried four agents, and I had an agent say, I'd like to see the whole book. And with book proposals, you don't necessarily have the whole book together. So basically he said, “Plan it out, show it to me.” And I hadn't gotten that far.
And it was so thrilling because while not every piece is written, I got to think about the order in which things appear. You know, we were (this is showing our age) when we were younger, you would make a mixtape for someone you were dating, and you had to be Mixmaster McFly and get it just right, the highs, the lows. So it brought forth that kind of vibe like, oh, what is the emotional tenor that I want to strike?
Melinda: Nowadays it's called a playlist, by the way.
Charlotte: Oh, ok, thank you. Now I know I can talk to the younger generation. [Laughter] “I made you a tape!” But I'm just thinking, like that absolutely, the planning of it was thrilling because it allowed me to take it more seriously. And also, the really cool thing is, I did not know this: I have 14 essays planned for this book, and many of them are written, and four of them ended with the word enough.
Melinda: Interesting
Charlotte: In the last line.
Melinda: And what do you make of that?
Charlotte: I think it's about, like, seeing that like in this moment what I have is plenty, but it's so interesting that so many ended with that. So I adjusted because I didn't want them all to end the same. But then it made me wonder if that was the name of the collection.
Melinda: Enough.
Charlotte: So yeah. Or This is Enough. So I just think that I resist planning, or I did a lot more when I was younger, but now I've come to see its incredible that value in me taking an idea that I have and that I play with and then bring it to share to others. I can't do it if I don't plan.
Melinda: Yes, absolutely. And you know it makes me think about, well, how we worked together to write our book. And so just to break it down a little bit more, like what does planning actually involve? It involves like perhaps making a map, like you did in the example you just gave. Like if we're submitting a book proposal, or a grant proposal, or a proposal to do any sort of project, we do have to kind of think through: what is the structure, how is this going to work, what's the budget, all these kinds of things.
And so we create a map of the process. Maybe it's a visual representation, maybe it's an outline. You know, however your brain works, you know, there's not one way to go about it. But it also involves all these fun things, like deadlines and milestones, and saying, okay, if I'm going to write a book and I know it's going to be 200 pages long, and I want to get it done in a year, well, how many pages do I need to write each month, each week, each day? And then we can develop a practice around that.
Charlotte: I think there's a phrase that people are using quite a bit with neurodivergence, and I think that really applies here, is how will your future self thank you? And so you're planning for that future self to be grateful to you for putting the steps into place. I did want to note that in our book, we do offer a Project Timeline where we actually break it down for you, and help you if it's something that you're not familiar with. And I believe you can email us and get a free template.
Melinda: Yes, you certainly can. Just find us on syncreate dot org and we will send you a free Project Planning Template that you can use for any of your creative projects.
So just to share a little more about how we actually wrote the book, because it was, you know, writing a book is not a quick process by any means. It often takes years, and that was the case for us. Once we started putting our ideas to paper, we took some time in our weekly meetings, and did a couple of retreats where we took a longer chunk of time and we got to a working draft of the book pretty much around the time the pandemic arrived.
Charlotte: Well, it's interesting because we had set a goal, I think by maybe August of 2020 to have a full draft. And then we like, what do we do now? We can't meet. But yeah, we found a way.
Melinda: We did. So we were meeting on the phone and working in a Google document, and once we had our draft complete, we went back in our mostly one-hour-a-week meetings, and went through and revised the entire book together.
Charlotte: Sentence by sentence.
Melinda: Yeah. Yes. And once we got to really refining phase, like literally sentence by sentence. And that's one way to work. It's not the only way to collaborate. I've heard of other people just saying, “You take this chapter, I'll take that chapter.” And you know, and we did that initially, but then we traded off, and picked up where the other left off, and blended it so completely that sometimes I can tell who wrote what and sometimes I can't, actually.
Charlotte: Well, if it's a sentence that has a lot of extra words, I probably wrote it. [Laughter]
Melinda: And then we edited.
Charlotte: Yeah, because we're documenting our own best processes, right?
Melinda: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So it was a really awesome collaboration. And, you know, we utilized the time and resources we had, which were not a lot. Like, we both have full lives and other going on and it was the pandemic and, and all of this. But you know, we talk a lot about incremental progress, right. And it just doesn't mean you just hole yourself up for three months and you do the whole thing. Maybe some people do that and that's great. That's not how we did it, because it wouldn't have been feasible for us to do it that way. But by setting a goal, and having milestones and deadlines for ourselves, we able to complete this book through a series of weekly meetings over several years.
Charlotte: And I would also add that we used the process itself, right? We played, then we planned, and then we produced. And then on the day-to-day level we would say, “Do you feel convergent, or do you feel divergent today?” And if it was a day that we didn't feel divergent, we'd go and edit. Or if it was a day where we felt like we could be generative.
So we actually used the process. And I think the other thing that's really cool about our book, that we have talked a lot about, is that it creates a shared language for creativity. And that's really important. So as we break it down into approachable tasks.
Melinda: Absolutely. And that's another thing that we encourage people to reflect on, like what is your own creative process? Because again, there's not just one way to go about things. And so we can't tell you like, “This is how you have to do it.” But what I always tell my clients and students is figure out the way that works for you. And once you figure out what that is, then you'll be able to do it the next time and the next time, right? So you don't have to reinvent the wheel each time. Yeah.
So that brings us, I think, nicely to our Creativity Pro-Tip for this session, which is around accountability partnership.
Charlotte: So with accountability partnership, it may sound really formal, but it's actually not. It's identifying someone in your life who will gently and firmly say, “Hey, how's that going?” And so you can do the reverse, so that you both can help hold each other accountable for projects that you want to get done. So like right now, I have one with someone that works at Vassar. She really wants to write. And I said, “So when should I check in with you about that?” And she said, “By December 31st.” So I have an email, or a note in my calendar, to email her to say, “How's it going?” So it's really pretty easy and it can be very, very powerful.
Melinda: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And that could look like a formal, you know, coaching partnership; that could look like a colleague who's working in a similar or different medium. Like I've heard of people, again during the pandemic, you know, just doing a Zoom session, and they both write, or they both work on their project for an hour on Zoom separately, but together.
Or it could just be a regular check-in weekly, monthly, whatever it is. But, you know, just having somebody who you can have some external accountability around your work, so that you sometimes that's helpful. We can be accountable to ourselves, and sometimes that gets a little tricky because life is busy and things get in the way. But we know we're kind of reporting into someone, that can be really helpful.
Charlotte: And just a quick, like I think sometimes people feel like, well, the real artists don't have accountability partners. But what were the salons, you know, where people gathered at the end of the day or every week to check in. Of course, they're socializing, but they're also they have people to report to. So it's actually, there's a tradition of this that we can lean into if we want.
Melinda: Absolutely. So at Syncreate, we're here to support your creative endeavors. So if you have an idea for a project or a new venture, please reach out to us for 1x1 coaching or join our Syncreate 2024 Coaching Group.
Charlotte: Which we're really excited to be offering. This will be a small group of folks who identify a project and take it through its process, and we meet regularly to check in and be inspired.
Melinda: Yeah, so we'll be walking you through the model that we've been talking about in these mini-sessions of Play, Plan and Produce. So you can find more on our website, syncreate.org, where you can also find all of our podcast episodes. We’re on social media as well under Syncreate, and we are on YouTube. We are releasing our episodes both in audio and video on YouTube, so find us and connect.
And we are recording today at Record ATX Studios in Austin, and with Charlotte in the Hudson Valley. So glad to have you with me on this new endeavor of our Creative Spark episodes. And the podcast is produced in collaboration with Mike Osborne at 14th Street Studios. So, thanks so much for being with us and we'll see you next time.
