The Five Ws & An H For Creatives
Simple Questions = Simpler Solutions
If you're anything like us, we tend to have an “it's complicated” relationship with our creative lives, especially when it comes to identity and process.
Whenever possible, we take a step back and try to simplify our approach.
One of the best ways we know is to go back to the basics and ask the questions every Journalism 101 professor preaches and teaches:
WHO?
WHAT?
WHEN?
WHERE?
WHY?
HOW?
Some are easier to answer than others. Frankly, answering the last two can take a lifetime. So we tend to give ourselves a time limit of 10 minutes or less per question.
Regardless of our creative challenges or problems, these simple questions have always helped us find the "write” way, pun intended, in under an hour.
Here's (simply) how we see the questions, as well as a few words of wisdom for your consideration:
WHO? = Fact, Fiction, Or Somewhere In-Between
"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."
Henry Ward Beecher
"I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best."
Frida Kahlo
WHAT? = Name It To Claim It
“The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.”
Rumi
"You don't take a photograph, you make it."
Ansel Adams
WHEN? = Tick Tock Goes The Temporal Clock
"One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it.”
Gaston Bachelard
"The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box."
Henri Cartier-Bresson
WHERE? = There's No Place Like Home…Or Not
"The only journey is the one within."
Rainer Maria Rilke
"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way – things I had no words for."
Georgia O'Keeffe
WHY? = Purpose…It's That Little Song (from Avenue Q)
"The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live."
Auguste Rodin
"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."
Pablo Picasso
HOW? = Emotional & Technical
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
Scott Adams
“Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use – do the work you want to see done.”
Austin Kleon
Six questions sound simple enough, right? That's because the questions are. The answers, your answers, can be as simple or complex as needed to find a way forward.
Whatever your creative challenges and problems, may this technique help you navigate the ups, downs, and all-arounds of the creative life.
The 5 Ws & An H continue to help us find, identify, and remember what it means to be a creator. Especially when we get lost.
Thanks for reading!
Clint
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