22 September 2003
I have killed two...
My name is Kate Mosse. I am the creator and writer in residence of www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk. Using this website, I am trying to share the process of researching, writing and publishing my time-slip adventure novel Labyrinth. I want to help and encourage others to release and enjoy their own creativity.
It is, after all, very easy to live today exactly the same life that you lived yesterday, that you will live tomorrow ...
Here's a good example of non-creative thinking:
This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value too us.
This error of imagination was written by an experienced executive in a Western Union internal memo of 1876. Looking back - hindsight is a wonderful thing, don't you think? - the name should have given it away: telephone = remote hearing, distant sound ... Surely there's a clue there!
As I write these lines, I am taking a break from writing my novel ... I have a view of the medieval cité of Carcassonne from my window ... If I let it, my mind will drift off into abstract contemplation ... but I mustn't. A writer is someone who writes. Sure, maybe we gaze out of the window sometimes, but we write …
And there's the explanation of why writer's block can be so painful – it can lead to a feeling of a loss of identity. A writer who doesn't write … What's that for?
It all reminds me of a wonderful quotation from Jacob Bronowski:
We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye... The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
In my case, the hand taps a keyboard ...
To come back to the telephone for a moment, this is what Alexander Graham Bell said about creativity:
Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing, that we see too late the one that is open.
That is so pithy and true, it could be a proverb.
Finally, this Monday morning, I am in mourning. I have killed two of my principal characters this week. How foolish but how painful is the loss.
How much further down can the Labyrinth take you?
