CREATIVE PROCESS
HOW I WORK
I’ve spent much of my life stepping into things I don’t yet know how to do. I learn the system, try the tool, question the default, and keep working until possibility becomes something useful.
That approach has shaped how I’ve taught, led, worked with organizations, and created. Today it also shapes how I use artificial intelligence and other emerging tools in my creative practice.
Curious enough to learn it.
Bold enough to try it.
Disciplined enough to make it useful.
The tools change. The responsibility for the work does not.
CURIOSITY → BOLDNESS → DISCIPLINE
CURIOSITY
Curious enough to learn it.
I don’t need to know the answer before I begin. I need to be willing to ask questions, study the system, learn the tool, and understand enough to see what might be possible.
Not knowing is not a reason to stay out. It is a reason to learn.
BOLDNESS
Bold enough to try it.
Learning only matters if I’m willing to act on it. I’m comfortable pressing the button, testing the idea, questioning the default, and beginning before every uncertainty has been resolved.
New does not automatically mean better. But unfamiliar is not a reason to dismiss something that might be.
DISCIPLINE
Disciplined enough to make it useful.
Trying something is only the beginning. I evaluate what works, discard what doesn’t, adjust the process, and keep going until the result is meaningful and complete.
Novelty is not the goal. Better work is.
Persistent about the goal. Flexible about the path.
ADAPT
When new information shows me that an approach is not working, I change it. I’m not loyal to a process simply because I planned it carefully or because it is the way something has always been done.
Adaptation is not failure. It is part of learning what the work actually requires.
PERSIST
Difficulty is not, by itself, a reason to stop. I stay with the problem, keep refining, and keep moving toward the outcome.
Persistence does not mean repeatedly doing the same ineffective thing. It means staying committed to the goal while remaining willing to change the path.
USE THE TOOL. STAY THE CHOOSER.
The stories are mine.
The ideas, characters, questions, intentions, and meaning behind them begin with me. AI has become a significant part of my creative practice, but it does not decide what I am trying to say or what the work ultimately becomes.
I use AI to question an idea, explore alternatives, identify weaknesses, test structure, create visual and audio possibilities, research unfamiliar territory, and sometimes show me an option I had not considered.
That can change the path.
It does not transfer ownership of the journey.
I remain the person deciding what matters, what belongs, what is true to the story, and what should be rejected.
When generation becomes easier, judgment becomes more important.
Does this belong?
Does it sound like me?
Is it true to the character?
Does the image match what I imagined?
Does the joke actually land?
Is the criticism useful?
Is the writing technically competent but emotionally false?
Did the tool improve the work, or simply produce more of it?
AI can help me explore and test more possibilities than I could efficiently pursue on my own, and give me access to capabilities that might otherwise require an entire creative team. That is enormously powerful.
Possibility is not authorship.
I decide what the story is. I decide what it means. I decide what survives.
I remain responsible for what I make with it.
THIS DIDN’T START WITH AI.
None of this started with artificial intelligence.
I grew up in the 1980s with something unusual at the time: a personal computer in our house. My dad was a programmer who built custom accounting software, and whenever I asked him how to make the computer do something, his answer was always the same.
Read the book.
So I learned to figure things out.
I became what I still jokingly call a button presser. I am willing to try the unfamiliar thing, see what happens, learn from it, and try again. New does not automatically mean better, but unfamiliar has never seemed like a particularly good reason not to explore something.
That pattern followed me into classrooms, schools, and districts, organizations, and complex projects outside my technical expertise. I learned the system, questioned familiar practices, tried new approaches, adapted when the first attempt failed, and persisted when the goal still mattered.
It showed up in my personal life too. I met my husband online in 2006, when admitting you were dating on the internet produced many a raised eyebrow. When the way I was using the platform produced more noise than possibility, I changed the process. I stopped waiting to be found, searched deliberately, and reached out myself.
It worked.
AI is another new tool in a much longer story.
The technology is extraordinary. The instinct behind my use of it is not new at all.
Learn what it can do. Try it. Question the default. Adapt the process. Keep your standards. Stay the chooser. Make something useful.