Creation

An Element of Fiction

A big word that: Creation. Godlike in some ways, and that, of course, is not so wide off the mark. For are we not the Creators of our stories — and that is not a question.

Says the Koran (as if it’s been listening in): “The first thing which God created was a pen, and He said to it, ‘Write.’ It said, ‘What shall I write?’ And God said, ‘Write down the quantity of every separate thing to be created.’ And it wrote all that was and all that will be to eternity.”

And the pen is still at it.

Apropos of God and writing, Sidney Sheldon once said, “Creativity is the most exciting thing in the world… Someone said that a blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.”

As writers, having decided what to write and why (and sometimes also how), now we’re facing what Salman Rushdie calls the hard bit: “Something out of nothing,” he says, “is the hard bit.”

However, it can also be the easiest, most exhilarating, most wonderful bit, the bit that many writers have been awed by and have reflected upon.

“Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order,” mused Virginia Woolf.

“Sometimes,” said John Steinbeck, “I have felt that I held fire in my hands and spread a page with shining.”

I think Guy Davenport puts it so beautifully: “The illusion that all imaginative writing must create is that the thrown spear finds a hole in the stars and sails serenely through.”

Yours truly has given this some thought, too (as I imagine you all have). In my experience, when writing goes well, words seem to drop down out of the clouds and bounce just right.

And as for the act of creation, I believe that the very root of it lies in stating with certainty that something is.

Ursula K. Le Guin, one of my favorite writers — sadly now gone — observed that “As a writer, you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude.”

My go-to word-philosopher and teacher, John Gardner, true to form, had insightful views on creation as well: “Art does not imitate reality (does not hold the mirror up to nature) but creates a new reality,” he said.

Then went on to say: “In some apparently inexplicable way, the mind opens up; one steps out of the world. One knows one has been away because of the words one finds on the page when one comes back, a scene or a few lines more vivid and curious than anything one is capable of writing — though there they stand.”

The ever-practical Jacques Barzun weighs in with, “I strongly recommend writing ahead at full tilt, not stopping to correct.”

Yes, when writing goes well, and all those words bounce just right, that is not the time to ponder the accurate placement of a semi-colon.

Another aspect of creativity is put beautifully by Will Blythe: “Writing fiction is — I won’t say this too loudly, because some writers may feel I’ll jinx things by admitting it — a form of happiness.”

As for Philip Gerard: “While you are writing, you are listening to your story. Listen closely, and you’ll discover astonishing things — things you never dreamed of when you started. That’s the mystery of writing: We don’t know what we know until we try to say it in words.”

Reading the following description by Reinaldo Arenas, the Cuban poet, for the first time, I thought it was the most amazing description of sitting down to write I had ever read — I still think so:

“There she is, waiting for me. I pull off the cover and stare at her dusty, cold shape. I clean off the dust and caress her with my hand, delicately. I wipe clean her back, her base, and her sides. In front of her, I feel desperately happy. I run my fingers over her keyboard and suddenly it all starts up. With a tinkling sound, the music begins, little by little, then faster. Now full speed. Walls, trees, streets, cathedrals, faces and beaches, cells, mini-cells, huge cells. Starry nights, bare feet, pines, clouds. Hundreds, thousands, a million parrots, a stool, a climbing plant. They all answer to my call, all come to me. The walls recede, the roof vanishes, and you float quite naturally. You float uprooted, dragged off, lifted high, transported, immortalized, saved, thanks to that subtle, continuous rhythm, that music, that incessant tap-tap.”

“I think,” says Salman Rushdie, “like most writers, that I am most completely myself when I write, and not the rest of the time. I have a social self, and my full self can’t be released except in the writing.”

Somewhat mystically, Vincent Van Gogh reflects on expanding his creative horizons — a reflection I believe holds true for the writer as well, “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.”

And last but by no means least, from the Peruvian writer Marie Arana: “Writers create themselves.”

Auto-Gods, like.

© Wolfstuff

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