Day Eleven: The Creative Board
Long ago in a far away land, I worked on a church staff for a couple of years. It wasn't a typical church staff, and I loved my job and the people I worked with. Up until I took the job, I had been traveling with music pretty steadily since I graduated high school. I felt like God was saying "Be still and be planted somewhere for a minute!" So I took a job at North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, GA- official title: Production Director for High School Ministries. Translated: A HUGE balance of being creative and being organized. I'd say I actually had to function in the organizational part of my brain more than that creative part because there were SO many creatives hopping around that place. But it was good. It made me work at the things that didn't always come so naturally. As a result, I'm a walking checklist. One of the things that NPCC implemented in their creative meetings was the use of a creative board. It's nothing they invented- lots of people use these- they just perfected its use, especially in a ministry setting. It's sort of like Chick-fil-a: "We didn't invent the chicken, just the chicken sandwich."
So, when the writing process started for the book, I sat blankly at my computer screen, glazed over and staring without thought at Brian's and my notes. I couldn't figure out how to get started. I've always been a tactile person. I LOVE writing, as in physically picking up a pen and paper and moving your wrist to form letters and words. Looking at everything so mechanically and intangible on a screen doesn't have the same magic to me. Then I had a crazy thought: What if I could implement the creative board for my book? Physically write out the ideas and thoughts on scraps of paper and pin them to a board to work out flow. It's actually a storyboard/creative board hybrid, but who's counting?
The first one I constructed was at my in-laws house over the holidays. Jonathan's mom had a massive poster-sized sticky note pad that she allowed me to use. So I bought smaller sticky notes and stuck them to my "board." The moment I started writing the ideas on the paper, the magic happened. I had it! It was all coming together, and I couldn't write fast enough.
That first chapter happened almost overnight, and when I turned it in, Brian's feedback was "Your pen is white hot!" I found my system. Thank you two and a half years of NPCC employment! :)
Here's a picture of a piece of the board, just to be cute:
Anyway, the creative board is the way I wrote the rest of the book. Although every chapter didn't burst forth with a "white hot" pen, they did come.
God, thanks for the little things you use to bring forth your intended purpose. It's funny that a creative board can be the conduit for your glory. Then again, you use us often, and we're way more difficult to manage than an inanimate cork board. Thanks for the amount of love you must hold us in to patiently work your plans in and through us. Amen.
- C