Tozak Filming

What role does joy play in the creative process?

This is something worth asking yourself, as it allows you to access more of the truth of the creative work you partake in.

The reason I bring this up is that this is a principle that I’ve been experiencing a lot of lately in my own creative journey.

Here’s the principle – joy is an indicator of the direction the heart wants to go

And if you follow the direction of the heart, you’ll create your greatest and most fulfilling work.

Let me ask you:

What’s the value of having fun within the work that you do?

What’s the connection between joy and producing great work?

How could having fun reveal your own creative genius and artistic voice?

The reason I phrase this concept in questions is because I could tell you all I want and believe about the importance of joy in the process, but getting you to ask questions about yourself and your own craft is what sparks ideas about your own journey.

Asking yourself questions is what gets you to access your own individual answers and insights from within.

So write out the answers to these questions on paper, and then reflect on them.

Sit with your own thoughts and see how you’re being called to perhaps follow more of your own joy within your process right now. Imagine how this would help your work and allow you to enjoy life more fully.

The creative work we do is a celebration of life, and so if you’re an artist, then your work is an indicator of how you show up for your own life. This craft of yours plays an important role in how you’re engaging with this temporary earthly experience – and joy is one of those beautiful emotions we get to feel during the journey.

And it’s not just joy for joy’s sake, there’s answers and truth within the joy we experience.

Now let me share a little bit about my own journey the past few weeks and how I’ve been finding more joy in my work, as well as what I’ve been learning from it.

So if you follow some of my content, you may be aware that I’m currently writing a feature film script, which I do plan to film and direct. I just started my 3rd draft about a week ago and I’m approaching this draft I’d say pretty differently from how I approached the 1st and 2nd drafts.

Now that I’ve had months and months of outlining, gathering ideas, and screenwriting the story, I am very certain and confident in my big picture story elements and concepts for specific scenes, as well as character arcs and beats. Now because of this, I am focused on more finely sculpting the scenes as I write them. As opposed to the first couple drafts where I was more or less forcing out pages so I could see how the story was playing out, I am now taking my time and being more patient with the screenwriting, because I already have a better idea on how these scenes are playing out. I’m more focused on detail and actually getting out quality pages.

Meaning, I am more loose in my writing. I feel more sensitive to where the energy is guiding me as I write. What is this energy?

Joy.

Joy is the energy I am following. 

Something I learned greatly this year as a writer is that my emotional connection to an idea within my story is an indicator as to how important that idea is for the story. I talked about this in my youtube video, “Writing a feature film for 6 months”, where the concept is that the vividness of an idea is like your soul showing you “This idea needs to go in the story!”

So, trust your deep seated emotions. Follow the feeling.

As I’ve been writing this 3rd draft so far, which I’m about 25 pages into, I have been following the energy of joy. I am trusting that the best direction to go with the scene is where I genuinely want to go. Because my desire, my joy, my intuition, all of these things are connected to guide me towards the greatest work. And by great work, I don’t mean great according to external definitions of what makes a great screenplay. I mean great as in something that’s reflective of my soul. It’s an artwork that comes straight from the heart. Which for me, is the best work I can make. 

If I dig deep and create something that I love and feel a deep connection with, this is when I see other humans also connecting with the piece. There’s something in the collective consciousness that wants to come out through my creative process, as well as your process, which desires to be birthed into this world so it may bring more magic to our planet. This is how I see the importance and power of art, as well as our collective responsibility to embrace our own creative gifts.

Anyways, back to specifics.

Something else that’s different is that I’m no longer setting a timer for my sessions when I write. I set a timer for the first couple drafts to guarantee that I could force out pages, which was great because that method worked for my purposes with those drafts. But now I’m feeling different on how I want to write, and what my goals are with this draft.

Not having a timer allows me to feel more relaxed, loose, and opens the possibilities for where the energy can direct me. At least this is how I feel. And what I’ve been noticing is that I feel more comfortable to stop writing, ponder an idea, feel out a scene, without the knowing that there’s a timer going off in the background.

For example, a few days ago I spent about 5 hours screenwriting. Not non-stop writing, because I’d get up to walk around, eat, or stretch. But I wouldn’t do any other work besides writing. If I had a timer, this session wouldn’t have been the same. It’s because I was able to follow the energy and feel out how the pages wanted to play out. And I feel that I produced my best pages this whole journey with this long session. The pages feel great, fun, funny (I’m writing a sci fi comedy-esc story, think Charlie Kaufman), and they feel vivid. As if it’s my soul remembering what I have been meaning to create my whole life. Everything in life has led me to this point to where I can write this story with these pages. I found great joy in writing these pages, and knew that following the feeling was what allowed me to write what I wrote.

What I would recommend you to do is imagine how it would look like if you followed the energy within your work as you create. Whatever that may look like to you.

Another area of my creative process where I’ve been experiencing more joy is creating my youtube videos.

A week ago I posted a video, “Have faith in your ideas”, which was the first time I created a youtube video that felt explicitly like an art piece. There’s a traditional talking head shot of me explaining my thoughts around creative ideas, but there’s other elements in there that I haven’t really explored yet in my own content journey. Sound design, music, experimental shots…

As I was editing the video, I never felt the type of joy I experienced editing it with other videos I’ve made in the past. Again, it was like I was sculpting an art piece. I felt the rhythm of the editing, I composed the music in logic pro to go along with specific beats within the video, which I don’t ever remember doing.

And I have to attribute this to the fact that the shots from this video were taken weeks prior without me specifically planning for them to be in a certain video. I just went out into the world with my camera, filmed some cool shots, and then figured out what I wanted to do with them. It’s a much more loose and, I feel, creative approach to making videos for myself which unlocked this novel joy.

And because I followed the joy, I believe I made one of my best videos.

So with all of this, I’d ask you to find more joy in your work. To have more fun, and create work that means something to you.

We all have our own relationships to joy within the process, and the more you cultivate your own joy, the more you’ll learn about what it means for your own journey.