Comments on: Fifteen Days of Deverry Interviews: Writers and Creativity

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:34:54 +0000

This discussion reminds me of the (rather peculiar) bicameral hypothesis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

By: Carol

Carol — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:37:46 +0000

I can think of those types of experiences too…when I was finishing my first (still in between first and second draft!!) story, I was also training for a triatholon. Much of the swim training was great for my creative processes…all these ends would seem to fill into place as I did my laps. Weird, but oit really seemd to work!

By: Asakiyume

Asakiyume — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:05:55 +0000

F. Scott Fitzgerald remarked, in fact, that writers drink so much because they are afraid of the creative moments that take them over.

–hard for me to believe that someone would feel that way. I like being taken over by creative moments. It’s a way of experiencing reality differently. But I guess this gets at what Sherwood was saying–that no two perceptions of a story or how it’s made match up entirely.

By: Mary Osmanski

Mary Osmanski — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:14:19 +0000

I think some of the experiences the three of your describe with the way the subconscious mind handles creativity will ring a bell with those of us whose writing experiences and successes are on a much smaller scale than yours:

-setting a story aside because you don’t see any way out of the danger/crisis facing the protagonist, and then waking up one morning a week/month/year later and realizing you “suddenly” know how to resolve the plot problem.

-being unable to resist the urge to nap for an hour or two during a day devoted to a WIP (work in progress), and waking up from the nap to find you almost can’t write fast enough to get everything out of your brain and onto the page. [As opposed to those times when you sit down to write and stare at the blank screen for a half hour, unable to think of anything to say.]

-abandoning a stalled or “this just isn’t any good” story and then looking it over much later (sometimes years later) and having no trouble seeing just what you need to do to fix it.