Cream Puffs

​Long before there was the internet or YouTube to look up how to make cream puffs, you used a cookbook or called a friend.  Years ago while I was living in Alaska, a friend who was interested in making a fancy dessert for her dinner party called her sister in Georgia - long distance.  Not at home, she left a message for her on her answering machine with a request for the recipe for cream puffs.  Her sister called back and left the following message for the recipe on my friend’s answering machine… “ ½ cup butter, 1 cup water, ¼  teaspoon salt, 1 cup flour and 4 eggs, mix and drop onto cookie sheet. Bake at 425 degrees for 25 minutes.”  She had timed her puffs to come out 20 minutes before her guests’ arrival.  She mixed the ingredients, and followed her sister’s instructions.   She called me in desperation, “They are as hard as hockey pucks!”  I asked what the recipe called for – Angrily she defended, “I added all the ingredients just like she said and I didn’t leave anything out.”  
 
This is the day I learned about the empathy of cream puffs … and the creative process. 
 
To make cream puffs there is a process.  What was left out of the instructions for my friend was that the cup of water and butter were to be “boiling” before adding the flour and salt.  As well as each egg was to be added individually into the flour mixture, beating thoroughly before adding each one.  There is a process in making cream puffs.  Leave out this important part of the process, and there is something entirely different than what was expected.
 
This is the same for creativity.  You see, a creative process takes

• Time
• Materials
• Skills
• A willingness to explore
• A willingness to fail
• Openness to ambiguity, and it’s
• Non-linear.

 
Just like the cream puffs, when you throw it all together with no awareness to the process, it might end up as disaster.  This is why most people do not enter the world of creativity.  And those that venture out in to it, often quit working on the projects they once loved.  “It’s just too hard,” and “it’s not worth it.”  The Creative Process takes time.  Something we humans become so frustrated by…and become more inventive to strategies that reduce time like developing paints that dry faster.  For materials and skills, some do not want to waste their money to explore.  Admittedly they never want to fail.  They limit the creative process through an unwillingness to look at old beliefs or myths about creativity.  Everyone is creative.  You do not have to have the genes… that’s a myth. All humans come equipped with creativity.  Creativity is a master strategy for problem solving.  Creativity is like a muscle, when you don’t use it, it atrophies.  You want to keep it exercised, used on a daily basis as Julia Cameron, the author of Artist Within, says that “creativity is the blood of the soul.”
 
And last, the creative process is non-linear.  A to B does not mean that C will happen.  For example, I wanted to make a fabric piece using part of Gustav Klimt “Adam and Eve.”  This creative process took me over three years to complete.  I would get frustrated with the process, not knowing how something would work, and put it aside only to pull it out when I had an idea I would try.  During this time, I went to many museums, hearing docents repeat their messages of “don’t touch!”   Eureka!  What became central to this fabric piece was that I wanted people to touch it.  The descendants of Adam and Eve became part of my creation by adding their DNA as they touched the beaded fabrics.
 
As for my friend that day, I brought over a cherry pie and helped her get ready for her dinner party.  I listened and laughed with her sharing her frustration of wanting to make something special and not having all of the information she needed.  We all need to hold empathy for our own creative process.  There will be times when we believe we don’t have enough time or the right materials and become so frustrated with the limited skills we have for our creations.  Or get stuck on the belief that “it” must be perfect to be in a show.  What creativity is… in the idea world, seldom looks like I want it to in the real world.  Holding on to ambiguity allows me not to give up when what I expected to happen does not happen the way I thought it should.  It happens they way it happens. 
 
For your creativity, keep your focus on the process - the recipe, not the product - cream puffs.