Imagination And Memory: A Creative Tension

'Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.'

Henry Miller

I don't plan before I write. Instead I start with an image that haunts me and perhaps a theme or two then see what emerges. The word imagination comes from the Latin word imago, which means image. According to psychologist, Robert Johnson, in his book, Inner Work, 'the imagination is the image-forming faculty in the mind. . .it generates the symbols the unconscious uses to express itself' Imagination is vital for creative life, for abstract thought, for the development of the sciences, philosophy, religion and even language. As Catherine Ann Jones wrote in The Way of Story, 'images are the language of the soul', yet in popular modern terms the role of the imagination has been denigrated, coming to mean something fictitious or a daydream and often labelled as mere fantasy.

The word fantasy is derived from the Greek word phantasia which meant 'a making visible'. For the Greeks, phantasia was much more than a daydream, it was, as Johnson wrote, 'the organ by which the divine world spoke to the human mind'. For me too, the image making faculty is far more than mere fantasy. Einstein believed that 'imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand'. I too believe that the imagination is perhaps the greatest gift humanity has been given. Its only limits are the ones we place upon it and ourselves.

Imagination is what makes us human, enabling us to experience events and emotions we might not normally experience, to reflect, to find commonality with others and thus understand ourselves. As writers we can imagine fictional characters and in so doing, reveal and discover something about ourselves and others, for as Lousie DeSalvo explained in The Healing Power of Story, 'storytelling teaches us or reteaches us empathy. This trait is a prerequisite for treating others well but it depends upon our ability to imagine what it feels like to be another person. We do this through storytelling.'

Imagination is like the trickster gods of old - a powerful liberating force, cutting through what has been established, making strange what is normal, allowing us to step into the shoes of another, to break free of what we know and to fly. And yet, Carmel Bird says in Dear Writer, 'the worlds of the imagination are constructed from the things we find in the everyday world'. Bird distinguishes between this everyday world and the imaginative world of 'other possibilities' but says there is no conflict between them, that the writer must give permission to the imagination to 'rearrange the building blocks of everyday reality'. Therefore the writing process is about taking the familiar and making it strange, letting the imagination create something new from what is known and thus venture into the realms of the unknown.

Imagination is not solely responsible for the mystery and magic of writing. Memory too, plays an important role. The word memory, comes from the Greek word Mnemosyne. Born from the marriage of Uranus and Gaia, heaven and earth, Mnemosyne was personified as the mother of the nine muses and the patron goddesses of poets. Fiction writers spend a great deal of time inhabiting the world of the imagination, but also draw heavily on memory, for as Jones writes, 'memory is one of the primal sources for creative images'. I am fascinated by the memories we carry (often unconsciously) and the way they arise in the process of storytelling, make links between seemingly disparate ideas and provide significance and revelation. In the process of writing, a tension is created between the grounding nature of memory and the flightiness of the imagination. For me, the vitality of that tension creates meaning. It is the source of my stories. Trusting it, is an act of faith in the unfolding mystery of story. In The Creative Writing Coursebook, Lesley Glaister writes that 'memory is refracted through imagination, often unconsciously, into something new.' That, she says, is 'the real stuff of fiction memory blended, refracted, transformed.'

As I write, I work closely with the unconscious; In the process I take my own memories and recreate them, usually in a fictional way, finding links and themes and connoting meaning through metaphor. 'Memory is a poet, explains Patti Miller in Writing Your Life, it stores 'experiences in imaginative patterns. . . connections are made through imaginative association rather than logic.' Miller goes on to distinguish between the left and right sides of the brain, suggesting that when people try to write from the logical left part of their mind, their stories become dull and flat, whereas the right side of the brain is where the imagination and poetry lie. As Einstein once said, 'logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.'

In her novel, Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels writes that 'the memories we elude catch up to us, overtake us like a shadow. A truth appears suddenly in the middle of a thought, a hair on a lens'. This is how my memories arose while I was writing Flight; spontaneously, from the right side of the brain, overtaking me with sudden revelations. At first the memories seemed random and out of context, so I was tempted to ignore them. Instead I decided to trust the creative process, so I took the bare facts and used my imagination to expand each memory and link it with my protagonist, Fern. Only then did I receive the gift that always comes with this connection, the hidden revelation, an understanding of its significance. For it is memory that helps us identify the patterns in our lives and imagination that helps us to interpret them. 'How we remember,' writes Jones 'is how we give meaning to a life lived.'.

As more of my memories arose and were given to Fern, I wondered if by giving my memories away I was in a sense emptying myself and in so doing, might in some way lose myself. In his book, Creativity, Osho distinguishes between psychological and factual memory, stating that factual memory is necessary but psychological memory is not. 'Factual memory,' he says, 'is not a problem, it is pure remembrance. When you become psychologically affected by it, then the problem arises'. I realised then, that this was the essence of the journeys many of us take when writing, particularly about trauma or pain. The result is a clearing of our emotional attachment to these memories. We still have them, and yet in writing them we release ourselves from their spell or 'curse' and thus the identity they had constructed. In writing about memories in this way, we evoke our imaginations to transform them and thus liberate ourselves from them, not lose ourselves in them. In the end though, whether it be fiction or memoir and no matter what reasons we draw on memory in our writing, memory is a rich and authentic source of material for writers, helping us to create credible characters, settings and back story. It is memory that grounds our stories, while imagination gives our stories the wings they need to soar.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Coming Unstuck

'Creativity needs freedom – freedom from the mind, freedom from knowledge, freedom from prejudices.'

Osho, Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within

In the previous post I explored the obstacles that prevent us from accessing or making full use of our creativity but there are also factors that help us to reengage with the flow of life and hence with creativity. In The Way of Story, Catherine Ann Jones defines the creative act as an 'act of liberation, the defeat of habit by originality', something which is echoed below in Osho's four keys to creativity:

Become a child again - A child sees the world in a special way. For a child everything has significance and wonder. Having children was a gift for me in many ways, one of which was the opportunity it brought to see the world once again through the fresh eyes of a child, something I explore in Passing Time, a non-fiction short story.

Be ready to learn - We need to let go of beliefs that stop us from learning more about the world and instead try to step outside of conditioning and ideology and trust in our own experience as a guide. In Osho's words, we must keep learning but never become knowledgeable.

Find Nirvana in the Ordinary - Look for the mystery and the magic in the every day world, then every form of work becomes a meditation from the heart.

Be a dreamer - Imagination is a vital part of creativity so we need to unleash it. Imagination is like the trickster gods of old. It is a liberating force, cutting through what has been established, making strange what is normal, allowing us to step into the shoes of another, to break free of what we know and to fly.

These four keys link closely to playfulness, something which many writers find difficult to access in the writing process and many of us find difficult to embrace in our lives. In archetypal terms perhaps we need to make friends once again with the wild child within ourselves, fearless and playful, intrigued by life and most importantly, not squashed by formula and conditioning. It's not an easy thing to do this because from early childhood onwards we are told the right and the wrong way of doing things, which is useful in some circumstances, but it can also make us close off our potential. At the age of nine my son was told by his teacher that his stories were wrong and so were his drawings. Over and again she made him redo them the 'right way' until he began to think himself stupid and became so anxious and depressed he was unable to go to school. It took us a year to convince him that his way was the right way, the way of discovery and creativity; a year to induce him to write and draw again, and a year for him to be ready to return to a school environment.

As Picasso said, 'every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up'. These days rote learning is valued more than creative thought. Formula more than imagination. We are taught to repeat and reproduce and in so doing we quickly lose our freshness of vision. We are told that this is the wrong way and that is the right way. We tell ourselves: 'I can't write' . . 'I'm no good at drawing' . . . 'My voice is terrible'. . . creating stories of dysfunction within our lives, stories that have often been triggered by people in authority: parents, older siblings, teachers, employers, religious leaders. . . I have heard the same story from many students over many years and I have carried my own stories with me too, allowing them to solidify into fact and become part of my identity. These are themes I have explored in Flight, as the protagonist, Fern, finds herself forced to rewrite her own life, gathering up the parts of herself that have been lost and rescinding those promises she has made that have weakened her.

As I see it, one part of the solution is to rediscover our playfulness, stop worrying about the consequences and realise that creativity is not an intellectual exercise. As Jung wrote, 'the creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity'. Creativity is about stepping over a line and taking risks. All my life I have had a sense of that line and the need to step over it, knowing that if I did I would be moving beyond my limitations and hence be capable of anything. After many years I've finally approached it and occasionally I get a glimpse of what it might be like on the other side. I'm beginning to unravel those stories that don't serve me, peel away the scar tissue from wounds that I didn't even know existed and in the process discover something more fundamental; an essential self that is not disfigured by experience.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Sticking Points

'Nature gives everybody energy which is creative. It becomes destructive only when it is obstructed, when no natural flow is allowed.'

Osho, Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within

Sometimes it seems that as soon as we start a creative project, circumstances and duty step in to bring it to an abrupt halt. Perhaps it is an elaborate avoidance technique, designed to stop us from facing the possibility of failure. A version of writer's block. Or perhaps it is simply because life gets in the way and a project must be put aside for a time. It isn't always easy to distinguish between the two, and either way, it is sometimes difficult to return to a project at a later date. We fill up our days until there is no space left for it, putting everything else first and not giving our creativity the value it deserves.

Like good food and exercise, creativity is fundamental to our health. We should find the time to value and nurture it, not place it at the bottom of our 'to do' lists. In his book Creativity, the author, Osho, lists five obstacles to creativity which he has written an entire book on and I shall attempt to summarise in a few lines and perhaps expand on in later posts:

Self-Consciousness - Osho calls self-consciousness a disease, describing it as a blocked, frozen state, a state of self that takes in but doesn't give out. 'A nonsurrendering attitude.' Whereas consciousness is free of ego, has no boundaries and is abundantly alive. Perhaps the state of self-consciousness relates to our wounded selves and the way to overcome it is to let go of resistance and tune into our unconscious selves.

Perfectionism - in order to find our way back to our creativity we only have to lower our standards and keep lowering them, until eventually the flow resumes. Perfectionism is dangerous because if we seek it we never arrive. And if by chance we did reach it then we would most likely be afraid to ever set out on the journey again. Osho associates perfectionism with ego, describing a paradox 'the real creator knows that he has not created anything. Existence has worked through him.'

Intellect – Creativity comes from the heart, not from the head. There are times when we use the head; possibly during our research, though even then we follow a strange intuitive sense that takes use to just the right places. We also use the head in the editing process. But in the writing process we write from the heart, drawing perhaps from memory but transforming it with imagination.

Belief - Many of the beliefs we hold, limit our imagination because beliefs tend to be carved in stone, rigid and unmoving. When we create we are drawing from our own experience and experience is ever changing. In the process we need to be open, not closed, seeking universal truths not rigid mind beliefs.

The Fame Game - the need for fame and monetary success acts as a hindrance to creativity, a block to the free flow of the imagination. We write what we think we should write not what we need to write for ourselves. And instead of immersing ourselves in the trials and joys of writing, we wish away the process for the end product. If fame and money comes (and they rarely do), then that's great but it shouldn't be the only factor that determines our desire to write or we will only be capable of composing, not truly creating, a distinction that Osho makes emphatically in his book.

These are obstacles which cause writer's block, though it's important to remember that they have an effect on all of our creative endeavors and by that I mean every part of our lives. More often than not, the obstacles that stop our creativity are self-generated internal ones like those that Osho lists. Sometimes though, the factor that stop us from writing are external ones, such as working long hours or school holidays or even tragedy. Sometimes we find ourselves in a kind of Catch-22 situation, becoming depressed or ill because our creativity is blocked and unable to access our creativity because we are depressed or ill. Grief has a way of stopping us in our tracks, though it can be a healing process to write our way through it as Isabel Allende did when she wrote Paula while her daughter was lying in a coma and eventually died; and Joan Aitken too, when she wrote A Year of Magical Thinking after her husband died suddenly and her daughter fell severely ill. However, there are times when we have to let go of a project and allow a space in our lives for healing or simply living, knowing that we can come back to it later, when we are ready. I agree with Catherine Ann Jones who writes in The Way of Story, that 'so-called writer's block is not a malady to be remedied but rather an opportunity to go deeper'.

For the time being I have been turned away from writing my new novel by the desire to spend time with my children during their holidays, a deadline to write a film script, the need to read my husband's first novel manuscript, a science thriller called The God Equation (there's a plug!) and my building excitement as Flight approaches its publication date. The trick is to let go of the writing of my novel without resentment and remember to apply that creativity to every activity in my daily life.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/

Writing Our Own Paths

'Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.'

Osho, Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within

It is a wonderful thing to start a novel. Despite the trepidation, there is the extraordinary feeling that comes when we set out on a journey. Having left home but not yet arrived, we inhabit the 'space in between', the no man's land in which anything and everything can happen. I have begun this new novel; felt the excitement of slipping into the creative process, not quite losing myself yet, but already surprised by the material that has arisen from my unconscious and formed into words on the page – well four pages to be exact. Not much, but just enough to know that there is more to come, patiently awaiting my attention. Once again I find myself being seduced by the mystery of the creative process.

Speaking on a panel of writers I once mentioned the word creativity, only to find another writer dismissing the word as a cliché. Of course any word can become a cliché with overuse and with misuse, but there's a danger that the inherent value of that word will then become derided. It would be a great shame if we began to deride the idea of creativity. Osho writes in his book, Creativity, that 'any activity can be creative, it is you who brings that quality to the activity'. Is it then possible to write a book or paint a picture uncreatively? According to Osho, it is. 'Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach – how you look at things.'

I looked up the term creativity and on answers.com found it defined as 'an ability to produce something new through imaginative skill, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form. The term generally refers to a richness of ideas and originality of thinking. Psychological studies of highly creative people have shown that they have a strong interest in apparent disorder, contradiction, and imbalance, which seem to be perceived as challenges. Such individuals may possess an exceptionally deep, broad and flexible awareness of themselves. . .'

In order to truly create, in order to do more than copy what is already known, then perhaps we need to free ourselves from conditioning and from the collective psychology. Paradoxically, I think one of the keys to freeing ourselves in this way, lies in story. Analytic psychologist, Juliet Sharman-Burke calls myth, fairy tales and folklore 'the original self-help psychology', while Jungian analyst and cantadora (storyteller) Clarissa Pinkola Estes, describes stories as medicine. 'They have such power,’ she says. 'The remedies for repair or reclamation of any lost psychic drive are contained in stories'. Stories help us to remember, to transform and to release our wounds, and in doing so, we are able to become truly individual, forging our own path through life.

At one level story is purely entertainment. On another level it can be a form of propaganda that reinforces the social order and prevailing attitudes, thus keeping people unquestioningly obedient to a social system and sometimes a religious system too. Stories can be read politically, interpreted differently according to their context and the numerous filters through which they are received. We can respond to stories from many points of view: take a Marxist perspective, give a feminist reading, psychoanalytic, realist, structuralist, and post structuralist, all of which are necessary and illuminating ways of reading narratives and understanding the culture in which we live, but cannot lay exclusive claim to the whole truth.

While our stories entertain, and provide us with ways of thinking about how to live within our society, on a third level they also provide us with maps that allow us to develop as individuals (more on this in a later post). Mythologist, Joseph Campbell, wrote extensively about this third level within story and this is the level which I explore in my novel, Flight. Although stories can and do encourage us to conform, paradoxically they are also subversive, in that the very structure of story is a map of the process of becoming oneself, a state in which the individual may live freely within society. As Osho writes, 'Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.'

Copyright (c) 2012 by Rosie Dub. All rights reserved. You may translate, link to or quote this article, in its entirety, as long as you include the author name and a working link back to this website:http://writeonthefringes.blogspot.co.uk/