I get it. I really do. Time is short and passes quickly. You are busy with a hundred and one things. And in today’s world of technology where information sharing and business occurs at the speed of nanoseconds, the oft-times snail-like process of creativity can become extremely frustrating. 
So we look for ways to essentially microwave our creativity…
Insert creative project idea. Set the timer for one day, one weekend, or at the very slowest, 30 days. Push start and tap foot impatiently while seconds, minutes and hours tick by. Ding!
Remove creative project. Check to see if done.
Well, a little charred over here. A little underdone over there, but still…
Serve it to client, customer, audience.
This is how we expect the creative process to go now. We want to nuke the h*ll out of it—the faster the better—and expect it to come out ready to serve.
Sometimes that works, if the work is short or a marketing tool rather than a fully developed creative expression.
BUT…
Often times microwaving results in work that lacks depth of flavor, eye appeal , or consistency.
Face it. Creativity takes time.
Think Michaelangelo’s sculpture of David. Or the writing and staging of Andrew Llyod Weber’s Phantom of the Opera. Even Stephen King, who is a prolific writer of at least 49 books, advises in his book, On Writing, at least three months of writing time for the first draft, and many of his own books have taken a year or longer.
In my blog post interview with Jill Badonsky, she stresses the importance of patience with the creative process, “Creativity…still requires time to collect information…to incubate…for connections, modifications, new moments of insight…The first ideas we come up with are sometimes wonderful but for the most they are not the best ones. Ideas go deeper when we return to them, revise, shorten, expose to other ideas, find other connections. This takes time and patience.”
Fully developed creative work takes time…to create, to make mistakes, to revise, to redo, and sometimes to even trash large parts of it or begin over.
Short-term deadlines whether self-imposed or external are useful for keeping you on task. A good example of this is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) where writers are challenged to write the first novel of a draft in a month. Note that is first draft, not finished manuscript. Challenges like this push you to create without second-guessing yourself after every sentence or brushstroke.
BUT…
Do not let yourself be seduced or convinced into thinking that that weekend’s or month’s worth of writing, painting, composing, or developing of a project is the final, finished, ready-to-put-out-into-the-world product.
It could be…but chances are it isn’t. Chances are, like that first burst in the microwave, all you’ve done is thaw the project. Now it needs some slow roasting time in the oven to fully develop flavor and taste and texture. And after that, you still have to get everyone to the table and serve it appropriately with candlelight, music and the fine china.
STOP microwaving your creativity.
Give it time. Have patience. Let it fully develop.
Your work deserves it. So do you. And so does your audience.