“The thing about creative drive, which you can just as well think of as a kind of pressure, is that there are so many ways it can be dissipated. Whenever I find that I’m not writing much of anything, or even just anything with real vigor to it, I usually discover—and always as if for the first time—that there are too many valves open, bleeding off this pressure. The releases are many, and some are unexpected. Food, for one. Curiously, I cannot write anything worthwhile on a full stomach. Come to think of it, though, hunger itself serves as a useful metaphor for thinking about creativity. A certain kind of intellectual and emotional deprivation is what I need to write with greatest intensity. All sorts of pleasures, both worthy and trivial, can seem to blunt it: watching films, reading, browsing the web, socializing, romance, too much sleep even. So, to find my way back to my sharpest writing, Spartan self-denial is usually the answer. Which is to say, to come around to the earlier metaphor, the valves must be tightened and the pressure must build. Invariably, within a few days, I reach a state of productive agitation. I find myself restless to write again, to probe with words. Almost magically, a reassuring force is restored to my writing, to my mind.”
—Mark de Silva, author of Square Wave (Two Dollar Radio, 2016)
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