A Writer's Story by Marion Dane Bauer

Author:Marion Dane Bauer [Bauer, Marion Dane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

9. Creativity

When Sir Isaac Newton, the English philosopher and mathematician who formulated the law of gravity, was asked how he came up with his unique insights, he replied, "By keeping the idea always before my mind." I believe that statement explains much of what people refer to as creativity. It isn't that creative people—if some of us can be considered creative and others not, which I doubt—think differently than others. If there is any difference at all, it is that some of us hang onto an idea more persistently, more obsessively, than others.

Most writers' early stories are not very successful, and the lack of success often goes beyond issues of craft yet to be learned to the story conception itself. The story idea is simply not "creative" enough. Which means that the writer hasn't hung on to it long enough, hasn't thought about it persistently enough, hasn't given it the time and attention that will allow it to ripen into a story ready to be written.

Everyone knows our brains are supposed to look rather like a mass of large, gray spaghetti. But in my imagination, my brain doesn't look like gray spaghetti at all. In fact, when I think of the inside of my skull, I see neat shelves lined up along the back of it. And a great deal of my time is spent rummaging among the contents of those shelves.

Moving through my days, I do all the ordinary things everyone else does. I eat breakfast. I read the newspaper. I talk to friends. I walk the dog. I read or occasionally watch television or a movie. I go camping. I paddle my kayak around a lake or go snowshoeing through the winter woods. And, of course, I write. I spend anywhere from four to six hours a day on my current project (and then two or three more on correspondence and other more mechanical kinds of writing).

Anyone watching me might say that I spend four to six hours a day being "creative." But in actual fact, my writing time involves only one part of my creativity, and not necessarily the most important part. It is often when I am walking the dog ... or chopping onions ... or talking to my partner that my most creative work is done. And it all has to do with those shelves.

The creative work for one of my stories begins with an idea that catches my attention. At first, the idea is simply what was given me, something I read or heard or saw, an incident with feelings attached but no particular meaning. And because the feelings attached to the idea seem important—I may not understand why they seem important to me, only that they do—I pick it up and put it on one of my back-of-the-brain shelves.

One of those shelves holds an image of one of my cats from a small incident that happened one day. I walked into the kitchen and found Popcorn, our white Cornish rex, sitting in the middle of the table.

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