I was reading a short story and, finished, went back to a phrase that stayed with me: a sliver of birthday cake, and next thing I knew I was writing a poem about a satin slipper.
How did that happen? I don’t really want to know. The best times are those with mystery.
Why I sometimes cannot do the blog, what at those times seems to be a pointless activity. Jeanette Winterson explains very well in her [August] column.
There’s a common myth that creativity is linked to dark states and depression; it isn’t anything like as simple as that. I think it is to do with being open, which you have to be if you want to be honest in your work, and it is to do with the liminal state of creativity – a place that happens on the cusp or the boundary of two worlds and is exhausting, exhilarating, but also frightening, and full of shapes that are unknown.
kiss the night air 