Getting it out

Putting things into words (or music or painting) is indeed making conscious what has hitherto not been fully so. By removing what is in our minds from within to 'out there', we alter our attitude towards these contents.

A phantasy which has never been spoken or written is differently apprehended by the person who harbours it from the same phantasy when it has been objectified. This is not only because, once written or spoken, it can be communicated and shared with another person; it is because it becomes an object separate from the person himself, which can be contemplated and studied by the person himself.

[Anthony Storr]
The Dynamics of Creation, p.224

Whistle while you Work

When creative work has become 'overdetermined' as this - that is, when it contains the whole of a person's self-esteem and sense of self - it becomes extremely difficult to pursue it.

An element of play and an element of craftmanship of a rather impersonal kind need to enter into all creative work. However important the work, it must also be fun to some extent; and work cannot be fun if every value in life is bound up with it. The same is true of love-affairs.

[Anthony Storr]
The Dynamics of Creation, p.221, 222

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A Pat on the Back

A young doctor, practising his profession, is constantly having his sense of identity reinforced by the recognition accorded him by his colleagues and by his patients. A writer experiences this less often; perhaps only when he publishes a book. Similarly, a painter may have to wait several years for his next exhibition to fulfil the same function.

If, in spite of possessing a 'strong ego', the creative person's sense of his own identity is less than it might be, this lack of continual reinforcement from others may be another part of the reason.

Moreover, creative people learn, often through bitter experience, to be secretive. As we said before, new ideas are tender plants better not exposed too soon to comment. They wither under criticism, and are often dispelled and diluted by premature revelation.

[Anthony Storr]
The Dynamics of Creation, p.220

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Planting a Seed

When I was young each fresh piece of serious work used to seem to me for a time - perhaps a long time - to be beyond my powers. I would fret myself into a nervous state from fear that it was never going to come right. I would make one unsatisfying attempt after another, and in the end have to discard them all. At last I found that such fumbling attempts were a waste of time.

It appeared that after first contemplating a book on some subject, and after giving serious preliminary attention to it, I needed a period of subconscious incubation which could not be hurried and was if anything impeded by deliberate thinking. Sometimes I would find, after a time, that I had made a mistake, and that I could not write the book I had had in mind.

Having, by a time of very intense concentration, planted the problem in my sub-consciousness, it would germinate underground until, suddenly, the solution emerged with blinding clarity, so that it only remained to write down what had appeared as if in a revelation.

[Bertrand Russell]
Portraits from Memory and Other Essays, p.195

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