How We Work

I inter­vewed Simon Pat­ter­son last week, and some­thing he said, dis­cussing how his latest work fits his cur­rent prac­tice, leapt out:

When I make a new piece of work, it feels like some­one else’s

Then, a friend who is work­ing on a treat­ment for a film men­tioned that he was having trou­ble, since he always begins with roughly sketched char­ac­ters, which develop as he writes, and in turn sug­gest the film’s plot and struc­ture, but his agent is keen to see the whole pic­ture from the get-​go.

Not having a cre­ative bone in my body - pass­ing judge­ment on the work of others is much more my thing! - I always find these little insights into the process of making fas­ci­nat­ing. This is why I’ve been fol­low­ing How We Work, a series of posts at Rod­corp exam­in­ing the work­ing meth­ods of the great and good.

Here are some of my favourites, by some of my favourites, so far:

As an expe­ri­ence, mad­ness is terrific… and not to be sniffed at, and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one every­thing shaped, final, not in mere driblets as sanity does.

- Vir­ginia Woolf

I expressed myself badly when I said to you that “one should not write from the heart.” I meant to say: not put one’s per­son­al­ity into the pic­ture. I think that great art is sci­en­tific and imper­sonal. One should, by an effort of mind, put one­self into one’s char­ac­ters and not create them after one­self. That is the method at least; a method which amounts to this: try to have a great deal of talent and even of genius if you can.

- Gus­tave Flaubert

My plays are no more con­structed than a carrot is con­structed. My method is to hear the first part of a con­ver­sa­tion in my head. Then I listen to some­one else reply­ing to the first state­ment. Soon this imag­i­nary dia­logue con­tin­ues until I can flesh the con­ver­sa­tion­al­ists out with actual names and characteristics.

- George Bernard Shaw
(para­phrased by Isidor Saslav of the Inter­na­tional Shaw Society)

A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket, and write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought are com­monly the most valu­able, and should be secured, because they seldom return.

- Fran­cis Bacon (the Eliz­a­bethan one)

As a writer I have dis­cov­ered there are cer­tain kinds of things for which I still need the pen, there are cer­tain things for which I need the com­puter, cer­tain things for which I need a felt-​tipped pen. And the kind of instru­ment I am using is influ­enc­ing my writ­ing enormously.

- Umberto Eco

Posted at 2pm on 16/02/05 by Jack Mottram to the art and culture category.
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