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In The Grip of Creative Power
Navigating the unknown in fiction
“You must like what you are doing very much. Either like your characters or hate them, you can’t be indifferent.” Saul Bellow
“I love reading novels, but writing one?” I hear the person in front of me say. “It seems inconceivable. I can’t imagine pages of writing. And you have one published, and now you’re writing a second one?”
And a third, I thought. And a fourth, if you count, the one currently on my computer, which I’ve been too disheartened to look at for a year.
I didn’t have a sophisticated reply for him. But I also didn’t want to suggest that I was under the influence of some mystical creative force. At one point in my youth, I realized I could take events from my own life and turn them into someone else’s story and see how they would play out in fiction.
“That’s kind of you to say,” I tell him with studied modesty, not letting on the warm feeling rushing in, soon replaced by a sense of ineptness and defeat.
I had no reason to share my struggles and frustrations with writing a coherent story with the person standing before me. Deep down, I felt a twinge of disappointment with myself as I realized the growing distance between how I was spending my time and my true passions, purpose, and writing.
