The Writer's Mind

Great interview with Australian Writer Sue Woolfe on the writing process at www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2007/1935554.htmHere's an excerpt, taken from her book on the writing process, The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady: A Writer Looks at Creativity and Neuroscience.Sue Woolfe: [Reads] I tried to control my wayward imagination but again and again I discovered that I couldn't create fiction when I was in conscious control of it. The work seemed stifled, artificial and counterfeit and ultimately the writing bored me. To my astonishment I found that I had to put all ideas of control out of my mind, indeed I had to put my own mind out of control, capitulating to what seemed my weaknesses to the only way it seemed possible to write. Every word seemed to change the nature of not only what was to come but what I'd already written. The writing became a process of chaos and uncertainty, full of unexpected contingencies, accidents and sometimes anxious, sometimes jubilant leaps of the imagination. But the outcome seemed orderly, in fact my eventual readers have told me The Painted Woman has a sense of inevitability about it right from the start.