“I feel much better when I know where I’m going. On the other hand, some of my most creative moments are the moments between books, when I don’t know where I’m going, and my head freewheels. Things come to me unexpectedly, and can become a character or a paragraph or just a perception, all of which can turn into stories, or a novel. I work just as hard when I’m not writing a book as when I am. I sit there and let things happen, mostly I throw away the next day what I wrote the day before. But pure creativity is just seeing what shows up. Once something has shown up, then it’s more focused, and it’s more enjoyable. But this in-between time is when unexpected things happen. Things happen that I previously thought were outside my ability to imagine. They become imaginable. And they come inside. That’s where I am right now.”
Salman Rushdie, on creativity and the gaps between novels
