Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities between thingslike composing a fresh metaphor, but on a more complex scale. One night in Hiroshima it occurred to me that the moon behind a certain cloud formation looked very like a painkiller dissolving in a glass of water. I didnt work toward that simile, it was simply there: I was mugged, as it were, by the similarity between these two very different things. Literary composition can be a similar process. The writers real world and the writers fictional world are compared, and these comparisons turned into text. But other times literary composition can be a plain old slog, and nothing to do with zones or inspiration. Its world making and the peopling of those worlds, complete with time lines and heartache.
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About David Mitchell

David Mitchell was a contemporary English novelist and screenwriter. David Stephen Mitchell is an English novelist, screenwriter, and translator. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Creativity — The spark of original thought, invention, and artistic vision

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