I’d be foolish to believe that there are two creative processes alike. Thus far, I've completed only several short stories and poems, and I would be lying to myself if I said there was a strict how-to that I followed when composing them. I collect themes in my spare time—a theme to me is the soul of any art work; strip a story down of all ornaments: plot, characters, time, place, and what is left is a swindle on which all those story elements hang. So I think deeply about life and humanity to find some profound, transcendent, universal truth, and when I find it, eureka, there’s my theme (I fancy calling them “themes”, although my usage is slightly unrelated to the traditional sense of the word). Surely, these ideas are far too profound to be articulated with a straight-forward nonfiction prose essay (at least to me), if they were not, I wouldn't bother with them. Once I have a theme, the task then is to construct an expression of the theme by designing characters, places, times, conflicts, ect., all of which are conducted to satisfy the expression of the ineffable. All the elements of my compositions are communally engendered and unified to express my theme. Writing with a theme in mind, I suppose; forces me to focus my creativity and generate story elements with purpose to express the theme.
Read, write, and be read, but always be yourself, for your voice is yours alone and originality can be found within, if no where else...