I don’t know if it’s the same for every writer, but creativity works on several levels for me. There is the uppermost level, where I am consciously thinking and planning and deciding what comes next or further on in the story, or how I might change things I have already written; the text might be there before me, or it might be at the front of my mind, almost as if there is an internal projector in my mind and I can almost see the words. I might be thinking something along the lines as ‘I want to get to this scene with these characters all believing this… how can I get there and give the characters the knowledge they need?‘ Or it might be ‘I want a confrontation between these two people, in what scene should I have it, how should I set it, what would be most dramatic and fitting to the thing they are in disagreement over?‘ I very rarely plan on paper, but if I were to do so it would be this sort of thing I might be scribbling down.
The less focussed and more open creativity happens when I am away from my desk; maybe I am driving or being driven, maybe I am waiting for something, maybe I’m in bed ready for sleep… This would be like a film running, with the story I’m writing spooling through, rather like rehearsals, characters talking to each other in different ways as if they were actors improvising, swapping roles, trying out different things ‘two people are having a fight on the edge of the sea in a savage storm… there are three possible people, who should it be, and who wins? Or maybe something has to happens to someone, but what should it be – should they meet someone who tells them something, have a bump in their car, leave something on the bus, get fired from work? Different scenes are played out in my mind and gradually something begins to come together, but it will only be as I’m actually writing that it actually becomes a firm situation… and even then it might be rewritten or cut out completely.
Then there is the almost subconscious, subliminal creativity… Things I observe or notice, things I do or say, things that happen either to me, or to others, or I’m told about or see on TV. Sometimes it’s big things, more often it’s little things. I wrote yesterday about how, with my mind on other things I told my husband about rhubarb, when I meant beetroot… I’m sure it happens to lots of things, you say the wrong name to someone, Janet not Julie, or mention the wrong place,Halifax not Huddersfield, or ask for tea when you wanted coffee… well,maybe it doesn’t happen to other people but it happens to me. I once told my husband there was snow on the peacocks… when I actually meant snow on the Pennines (hills)
This saying the wrong thing can lead to a lot of confusion or misunderstanding – useful in a novel; however, I have used it with a character I’m writing about now. Her husband mentions meeting a friend called Monica, but the character is only half-listening, she is nursing her baby daughter and her mind drifts to another friend, Milly, whose daughter is missing… so she turns to her husband and says ‘So how is Milly?’ She means Monica, but just said the wrong name; the purpose of this is that it allows her to explore her thoughts about the woman whose daughter is missing and talk about how she would feel if her own baby daughter went missing… This conversation with her husband allows him to continue his search for the missing girl, even though it might put him in danger.
Maybe other writers don’t write as I do… maybe they plan it all to the last word – but wouldn’t it make it rather tedious to write? I couldn’t do that!
Lois Elsden 