12 Winters Blog

For quite some time now, I’ve been interested in what I’ve come to call “the psychic origins of creativity.” That is, where do the guiding inspirations for a creative work come from? I’m mainly interested in writing, especially fiction, but I think the question pertains to any creative endeavor. In an earlier draft of this post I wrote the above question as “where does the guiding inspiration,” but I think making the question singular is rooted in the well-established romantic notion that a piece of writing grows from a single inspirational event, person or object—and that’s a gross oversimplification of the process. Many things, most of them mostly unconscious, contribute to shaping a novel, short story, poem, musical composition, work of art, and so on.