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Fabs Forns
11-17-2008, 04:31 AM
The Creative Process.

I guess it’s different for everyone.

For me, it begins on sleepless nights, when the sandman makes my room his last stop.
Daytime does not work, too much going on, colors, movement, lights, the phone, e-mails,
work, gym, errands.
Oh, but when the long hours of darkness catch me awake, I begin fishing for ideas in the total blackness . Sometimes I look in the files of memory, an unfinished idea, a picture that I’d like to say something about. Others, I use my imagination, what if…?
I tried not to get up and write in the invisible paper with the ink of my memory, forming a draft, changing words. Not easy to find the perfect word with limited use of a second language. By the time sleep comes, I know exactly what I’ll write and how.

Morning, I head straight to my notebook. Yes, pen and paper. No red underlining of my typos, or green correcting my grammar. I’ll worry about that later. I’m probably the only one who understands my notes, but then and only then do I go to the machine and type my precious reverie.

How does it work for you? How does the muse approach you?

Lance Warley
11-17-2008, 07:55 AM
Great idea for a thread, and a great question, Fabs: How does the creative process start for you?

For me, it starts with a nonordinary experience. Something seems to happen and a shift occurs...hard to describe in words...perception changes...senses change...time stands still...other nonordinary things may happen.

Day or night don't seem to matter, as I've had it happen to me at any time. Nature seems to be a trigger for me...the more remote, the better...lakes, oceans, mountains, swamps. The challenge for me is trying to express it in an "ordinary" reality format, while preserving the wonder of the nonordinary experience.

I'm reminded of some lines from a King Crimson album. I didn't google them, just doing it from memory from several decades ago, so they may not be 100% accurate:
Said the straight man to late man, "Where have you been?"
Said the late man to the straight man, "I've been here and I've been there and I've been in between.
I talk to the wind, but the wind does not hear..."

And then I seem to remember a great flute riff.

David Thomasson
11-17-2008, 08:48 PM
I tried not to get up and write in the invisible paper with the ink of my memory, forming a draft, changing words. Not easy to find the perfect word with limited use of a second language. By the time sleep comes, I know exactly what I’ll write and how.

Morning, I head straight to my notebook.

You're fortunate that you can remember. I've been burned too many times: I wake up and my mind is spinning like a hamster's wheel. Ideas are bursting forth and falling right into place. I can clearly see a whole set of ideas, exactly how they fit together, and a good deal actual language with the right tone and color. Ahhh, what beauty. I've got this project by the forelock. I can go peacefully to sleep and just write it all down in the morning.

Next morning: Sorry, Charlie. My mind is a bowl of cold, star-crossed tuna. No spark, no color, no tone, no taste. Nothing. Where are all those beautiful ideas I had in the night? I know not. Whither that elegant logic? Vaporized in the darkness.

Now I know better: When the hamster is wheeling, I turn on the lamp, pick up the pad and pen that now reside in my bookcase/headboard, and make notes. Write down enough to decipher them in the morning.

Julie Kenward
11-28-2008, 11:21 AM
Fabs, I usually am inspired by words that remind me of a photo or a photo that inspires me to write words. I let both bounce around in my head for a few days and when I don't want to do straight photo editing/photoshopping I'll browse through my catalog of images and see what comes together in my mind.

I have to type at the computer now - it's just so much faster for me than handwriting everything down. I then bounce back and forth between the image and the words and spend a few edits trying to see what someone else will see and not just what my own personal memory is putting into the image.

There are other times, though, where I will simply be profoundly struck to sit down and do it all from scratch and won't even know why I'm doing it until it's all complete. In these rare instances, it feels almost like an out of body experience and I've been known to look back and think, "I wrote that?"