More on creativity

Elizabeth read my blog about creativity and send me a video clip by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. Speaking to a good-sized audience, Gilbert said the "freakish success" of her most recent book had caused others to regard her as doomed, because they doubted she could ever match the success of that book. At 30, with at least 40 productive years ahead of her as a writer, that's a pretty daunting thought. But it is, she seemed to say, part of the tension or anxiety of being creative. And then she discussed various theories of creativity through the ages--Greek and Roman eras when creativity did not reside in the soul but came as a message from an outside source. Hence the artist, writer, whatever, was not responsible--that outside source was. Today, if I was hearing Gilbert correctly, she believes that artists are indeed inspired by a muse or whatever you care to call it. We, as writers for instance, have to show up to do our daily work, but the muse has to contribute too. She cited the instance of a well-known song writer who had an inspiraton for a song as he was driving on a freeway--he looked up at the heavens and said, "Can you not see that I'm driving and can't do anything with this? Could you come back at a more convenient time?" And she had an imaginary conversation with a muse of her own, saying in effect, "I'm here, doing my part. I'm working, slaving away at the manuscript. I've shown up. Could you at least do the same?" An artistic creation, as I heard her words, is a collaboration between the artist and the muse.
It's a fascinating theory but not one new to me. Elmer Kelton talked about characters who took hold of stories, like a horse with a bit in its mouth, and took them places he never dreamed. And Dorothy Johnson (author of "A Man Called Horse," "The Hanging Tree," and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,") once wrote me that she'd had a terrible shock: the man she thought was going to be the hero of her WWII novel about New York, "The Unbombed," (never published) was going to be killed in the war. I've even known that kind of insight myself, when suddenly I knew the main male character was going to ride off and leave the protagonist behind. It's almost a cliche for writers that your characters tell you where the story is going, but I did hear one rather successful novelist once say that's balderdash--they were his characters, he created them, and he was going to by damn tell them what to do. I felt sorry he didn't have a muse.
On a much more mundane note, Jeannie and I went to the church bazaar today. When I was a kid, I loved those Christmas bazaars, with pomander balls and all sorts of homemade items. Today was a disappointment--the bazaar has gotten increasingly sophisticated, and some of the vendors whose work we liked best weren't there, like the woman who had creative, instructional, hand-made toys for children. Or the scrapbook expert, though I'll never be into the current craze of scrapbooking. Jeannie, who's much more of a shopper than I am, breezed through quickly, and we left for lunch. She and my good friends Betty and Jean went shopping in Waxahachie earlier in the week, and I excused myself due to work obligations--Jeannie and Betty both told me they all talked about how I would have hated it, not being a shopper by nature.
Betty and I had dinner at Chadra tonight--I had a kids' portion of spaghetti marinara, which was still a lot, and a small salad. Came enough in under points I could eat a bit of choolate!
A pleasant day but like all those of this week, so crowded with things. I am busy all the time but Lord knows with what!