Blaine Hogan is a creative master. He leads an amazing team of artists at Willow Creek. You can follow him on twitter, HERE, and his blog, HERE. Today we chatted about his creative process and new book.

1. What does your personal creative process look like? How do you approach this book creatively?

• I’m a scrapper. By that I mean I try and collect lots of things – music, images, words, etc. and then weave them together to tell a story. I’m not usually the “come up with a story out of nowhere” type of guy. I need some kind of source material to usually begin. The book was similar. I wanted to be able to express my own creative process and I had been doing so in bits through notes I’d been taking in random notebooks over the years. I poured through the stacks and found what eventually became the skeleton for the book.

2. Where do you find your inspiration?

• Everywhere. Literally. Spotify. Pinterest. When I’m running. Reading. When I’m quiet. When I’m eavesdropping on conversations in coffee shops. My goal is simply to always be available.

3. Who do you admire in the creative field?

• I love Danny Boyle. I love his ability to work on stage and screen. He’s an inspiration as someone who has made theater cinematic and made cinema theatrical.

4. If you could only follow 5 people on twitter, who would it be?

• This is a tough one. @bjornamundsen (my co-director) @jarrodshappell (my best friend and thought leader) @thisissethsblog (no need to define) @chasejarvis (brilliant man) @joshualongbrake (amazing photog and friend)

5. Favorite social media platform?

• Twitter.

6. If you could gather every creative person and tell them 1 thing…what would it be?

• Figure out the story that you’re supposed to tell then do everything you can to not be afraid to tell it.

7. Why did you write this book? What do you hope to see happen with it?

• Again, much of it was an exercise to figure out my own creative process. I wanted to know how I made stuff. As I kept writing I started seeing that maybe I had something to say that hadn’t been said. That maybe there was a way to connect this business of making things to living better lives as artists and humans (much more on this in book #2). Honestly I hope a ton of people read it and connect to it. In this second revised and expanded edition, I’ve included reflections and exercises after each chapter. I hope people will work through those. There are no easy ways through the creative process, there is just work and I hope this book helps any artist understand that we’re all working our asses off right alongside them trying to make the world into what it ought to be.

8. Over the past few years you guys have created some epic short films at Willow, what is the strategy behind these pieces?

• The strategy really is simply to create beauty that connects with people so they can connect with God. We didn’t say anything like “hey, film is really popular right now, we should start doing film.” We just started making it.

9. Can you give us a peak into the creative process of making these piece?

• We try to start with the story first. Once we know what we want to say, then we figure out HOW we want to say it. This is when we start creating look and feel mood boards, gathering reference music, etc. From there we write a treatment, storyline, beat sheet, script, then it’s off to storyboards and pre-production.

10. Who is one person you would like to work with that you have not had a chance to collaborate with as of yet?

• Danny Boyle again.

You can check out his new book, UNTITLED, today on Amazon. It is a great read.