Where Creativity Comes From

I have some good news and some bad news. It’s about creativity. Well, mine anyway. After many years of alternately experiencing both droughts and monsoons of creative vision, I have miraculously discovered from where to harvest my most creative self. I liken it to mining for gold−since the result of every creative endeavor (on a good day) yields a precious, rare, wondrous thing of beauty and value.

Of course no two nuggets of gold are alike. If I’m really lucky, some are hefty chunks.  Others are tiny slivers, gossamers even, so slight that most people could not see their true value with the naked eye. Each one is multi-faceted, sharing characteristics that are, at times, even contradictory. Parts are smooth like glass, so that if you looked into it you’d see yourself−only better.  Some parts are scruffy and rugged with razor sharp points that could gouge your eyes out like the grin of a saber tooth tiger. The dirty crevices inevitably found in nuggets of gold always seem incongruous to their opulence. Crevices caked with dirty black deposits so dark, like the unknown of a cave. Let’s not forget the shimmery twinkly parts, gleaming with luster like a wink from a star. To me it makes no difference what form or size the nugget takes−they’re all solid gold.

Ok. Here’s the bad news. There’s only one way I can source these clusters of creativity. For me, the most successful excavation happens under one condition: when I’m in a horizontal position in a half-sleep. I’m not kidding. I discovered this years ago when I started writing my first novel. I’d sit for hours into the late night at my computer exhausted and weary, often with a steady stream of drool leaking from the corner of my mouth. I would try to push through the zombie state because these were the hours I needed to make writing progress−my young children were finally asleep. But I would be too spent to feign creativity or anything writerly, so off to sleep I’d go.

It was on those exceptional nights when I’d find the most wonderful sleeping position ever, the kind where all body parts are in the exact intoxicatingly perfect place. (Why can’t my body find that position every night?) It was on these rare nights, when I’d feel myself slipping off into a deep slumber, that someone from my novel, usually the protagonist, would urgently throw open the door to my semi-consciousness. My first thought was always, “What the heck are you doing here?” Then, “Where’ve you been for the last three hours? Now you got something to say?” I’d argue with the protagonist a bit, but it was clearly futile because I knew in my heart of hearts that a gold nugget had just been plopped on my pillow.

Well, years have passed and one would think I’d have a system for capturing these inopportune but welcomed visits of vision. Since they can take the form of great dialogue−so natural it feels like I’m eavesdropping, or a shocking plot twist or the greatest cliff-hanger chapter ending ever, I should at least have a pad and pencil on my nightstand. I don’t. Nor do I have a mini voice recorder. And since my memory sucks, and since my memory sucks, I can’t possibly depend on myself to remember any of it in the morning. Sometimes I create word associations to try to help me remember; they’ve had varied success. Other times, I’ve relied on the rhythm of sentences that I repeat over and over again in my sleepy state.  Oddly, I can remember the rhythm of a sentence in the morning and derive the words from there.

A mini recorder would be nice.

This pattern of getting gushes of creativity when lying down dozing off has become predictable lately. So much so, I can safely call it my technique. One in which I call upon now even in the middle of the day. If, say, after toiling at my computer for an hour or two, but I’ve yet to make any kind of inroads on the story I’m writing, I actually start to feel a little sleepy. I get up from my desk and lie down on the couch, snuggle up to my favorite pillow, and drift into a half-slumber. And voila! I strike gold.

I’m sure it sounds strange to some people−in fact it was strange to me in the beginning. But it makes sense in a world with so much buzz, distraction and sensory assault, that I would need quiet in order to think and create. Emails, facebook and twitter are an instantaneous click away from a Word document. I don’t look at creativity and inspiration in the same way anymore. Noise ignites inspiration, quiet ignites creativity. This brings to mind something I read in Anna Quindlen’s Newsweek piece, Doing Nothing is Something. “You can’t write poetry or compose music or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity.”

My kids used to think it was crazy that I’d need to sleep to come up with my best writing ideas. They’re used to it now. In fact the other day my daughter and a friend were walking through our family room on the way to the kitchen. The friend saw me on the couch, curled up under a velvet blanket, and she whispered to my daughter and pointed at me. Through my semi-conscious state I heard my daughter say, “Oh, don’t mind her, she’s just writing.”