I am fascinated by the creative process, particularly when I'm not engaged in it. The more I think about it and try to pin it down the weirder it seems.
Do you picture a scene before you write it and then describe what you see or do you bring the scene into being by the act of writing, the words themselves populating your brain with images? Do you hear the voices and try to cpature them or do characters only speak as the words tumble onto the page?
I think for me the words precede thought, or at least that's what it feels like. I never know what is going to happen until it emerges somehow or other from my incompetent careless fingers. But words definitely make pictures in my head so that in editing I can take a closer look, re examine a shadowy figure and discover that he has black hair, that his shirt is crimson, that he holds a damascene blade in his left hand and that his nails are painted the colour of ripe plums.
I always thought that this process of writing was the same for all writers, but of course it isn't. I am intrigued to discover that many people know what they are going to write before they start, that some people don't picture what they write at all and others are haunted by the disemboided voices of characters they have never met, though they may just be the mad ones.
It isn't much discussed, this actual business of envisaging or creating perhaps because it is so hard to describe; the moments of making things up are fleeting, the ideas, intangible. At times writing comes close to lucid dreaming at others it is more like constructing a flat pack wardrobe from IKEA - one of the ones with the key piece missing - and doing it blindfold.
And another thing... is this imagining universal or is it only writers or painters who work this way? When people ask where we get our ideas from is it because they don't have any and are baffled by the process? Doesn't everyone sit and extrude images, places and people, pulling them like rabbits from a hat of our imagining or gathering them like candy floss on a stick. Are we writers particularly strange or is it just that we, spending long hours staring into space, are more inclined to notice? Any ideas?
10 comments:
Great Post, Nicky.
This elusive creative process is very difficult to pin down, and so much that you say, such as
'I never know what is going to happen until it emerges somehow or other from my incompetent careless fingers.' is exactly how I feel about the writing process.
The words create pictures in my head more often than the other way round but they are released onto the page (or screen) as I type. I once toyed with the idea of speaking into a recorder instead of typing, but for some reason that process of hearing the words out loud in my own voice just didn't work.
It was as if the ideas translate themselves through my fingers onto the keyboard (or a notepad is needs must) but any other method simply wouldn't work.
Yeah I can't write out loud either and it took a long time to move from pen and paper to computer keyboard.
Great post and very true. I think you really know when it's working when the words just pour out (unless of course it's crap...)
Oh yes Catherine! That bit when you're galloping along, finding it hard to type quickly enough. Saying it out loud wouldn't be fast enough either. And sometimes it's rubbish, but more often than not, when it flies I think it has something important to say about the story. I like to think so anyway!
Good post Nicky. Thanks!
Really interesting post. I've thought about this with reference to plannng. I would love to plan everything I write in enormous detail - and then just write it - but I find this incredibly hard to do, and I think it's partly because as you say it's the words themselves - the process of writing - that actually makes the world, the characters, the situations - and so ultimately the plot - come alive.
Lovely post, thank you Nicky. I always find other people's methods fascinating, and so alien. I see it all like a film and write it down. And although it can be hard to keep up, I don't see very far ahead so other than in a vague sense I don't really know what's going to happen until it does.
awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com
I just want to say thank you for this post Nicky. It was been fun reading and actually I gained enough new ideas with your help. Everyday is creativity!
I think you have cracked the creative nut with this very good post, I really enjoyed it and admire fictional authors the words "just out of the blue springs to mind" good site terry
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