The creative process is learning not to see with your eyes, but with your heart and soul. Creativity is an original product of the imagination. The imagination is the central force in driving the creative process. The creative process focuses on the mechanisms and phases involved as one partakes in a creative act. A second aspect of creativity is the creative person. Here, personality traits of creative people are central. The creative process includes five steps but is not limiting, leaving room for your own style to shine through.
             Creativity involves the translation of our unique gifts, talents and vision into an external reality that is new, useful and uniquely ours. Stephen Nachmanovitch, author of Free Play, wrote "spontaneous creation comes from our deepest being and is immaculately and originally ourselves...ultimately, the only techniques that can help us are those we invent ourselves (10)." We should not feel constrained to stay between the lines; we should feel free to express ourselves in any way we see fit. Originality is derived from being true to ourselves, not anything else.
             Artist Betty Edwards believes there are five common steps in the creative process. The creative process steps should be used as a guideline to aid the creative individual along the way. Luckily, "the trail...is at least marked with pointers to guide the chase...like clues in a treasure hunt, these notations spur the quest (Edwards 2)." The stages of the creative process follow a successive order beginning with the first insight and followed by saturation, incubation, illumination and verification. There is not much more to say about the creative process "because there are different personality types, and the creative processes of one are not the same as those of another...each of us must find his or her own way into and through these essential mysteries (Nachmanovitch 10)." The process is like a darkened path with only a few stre...