The mug on my desk has a chip on the rim. Emblazoned with Albert Einstein’s famous quote Imagination is more important than knowledge it was a favourite, so there was never any question of tossing it out once I could no longer use it for my cuppa. It now holds my pens and pencils, and reminds me every day of the importance of looking beyond what I merely see, challenging me to listen to my heart and not only my head.
The creative process is a long and winding road, with enough highs and lows
and twists and turns to bring you undone unless you believe you’re on the right
path.Finding ways to negotiate that road, particularly in the times when I feel dry and uninspired, is what keeps me forging ahead, however faltering my steps may be.
‘Write what you know’ has long been a premise from which to start, but
for most of us our lives are fairly routine and ordinary and on the surface wouldn’t
appear to be of much interest to anyone else. To quote Jean-Jacques Rousseau The world of reality has its limits; the
world of imagination is boundless. If it were not so, the whole realm of
literature and film and music and every other artistic endeavour you could
think of, wouldn’t exist.
But throw in some other possibilities, little tangents, head off down
some unexplored sidetrack somewhere, ask ‘what if…’ and see where it leads. For
writers, those two words can conjure up all sorts of scenarios, bringing
disaster, mayhem, conflict, and all manner of unexpected joys or tragedies into
an otherwise ordinary world. For all artists and artisans, whether visual or
not, those words can open up other ways of approaching a task, especially when
the ‘usual’ way of doing things no longer has the impact or holds the sense of
fulfilment it once had.
All too easily we lose our inner sense of wonder and curiosity when our
childhood years are behind us. We experience moments of it here and there, where
something resonates deep inside, and wonder in those moments how and when and why
we let all slip so easily. We don’t need to recapture our youth, we simply need
to capture those moments when they come our way, and be thankful.
Think outside your head
travel through imagined worlds
never seen before
