The Creative Impulse

Yesterday I talked with a woman I haven’t seen or spoken to in over thirty years.  We both attended Sarah Lawrence College in the late 60’s, sat in, took writing classes, talked endlessly about our lives and the meaning of it all, graduated and got on with life.  She has become a photographer/artist, and I, a writer.  It was fascinating to begin a conversation about our lives, where we have gone, where we have come, and both of us want to continue the dialogue.  This morning she emailed me, largely about her idea to create some art pieces around the theme ‘white’, possibly using ‘white noise’ as background music in the art gallery, some ‘white’ photos, like men in their Klu Klux Klan outfits, and new pieces she is creating using push pins to create shapes in the midst of white space on paper.  I have seen photos of the pieces, and they are very appealing, with lots of movement from the pins and the shapes she creates with them.  She says she has so many ideas for her show; she will need to whittle them down to something do-able.  How do artists come up with these ideas? Another painter friend from high school often talks about setting up her easel and how her brush moves.  I remember hearing Ursula Le Guin talking about the story coming through her, as if she was a conduit.  For what: spirit?  That is what the ‘brush moving’ statement speaks to as well.  I usually begin my projects from personal experience, or from pieces of my own life, and then elaborate.  When I was going through my second divorce, my daughters were a huge support.  At the same time I had been reading about a young American woman in Peru who was in prison for having guns buried in her yard.  Who knew where they came from?  At any rate, from these disparate experiences came my idea to write a novel about a woman who receives a phone call in broken English, telling her that her daughter is in jail.  The daughter is working with indigenous folks in Nicaragua.  She and her younger daughter fly to Central America to get her out, only to realize it is not a question of ‘when’, but ‘if’.  Though this was a very sad theme – I was sad, after all – it also made me feel  closer to my daughters because I used them as models for the characters I was creating in the novel.  In the beginning when I was outlining, it felt like they were with me in the small room I was renting.  Then the characters became real in and of themselves, and just took off.  Their words ‘moved through me’, or that’s how it felt. These are my thoughts this morning.  How do you create?  Where do your ideas come from?  Do you know?  Does it matter?  I’d love to hear what you think, since what I learn from other women tends to clarify my own thoughts and feelings.