Fresh from a movie meant to bring life to the heart of the woman behind some of the most beloved novels ever written, I find myself inspired. With lines and archetypes sure to be familiar to the Jane Austen fan, “Becoming Jane” sought to weave a connection between the life of Jane Austen, and that of her characters. My mind was stirred. How is it that writer’s write? From where do ideas come?
My conclusion? Writing is but fragments of life, the writer’s and those of the world around her, nothing more than a collective entity of experience and breath. It is taking these fragments and bending, breaking, and mending them into something new. Each fragment no more than one simple remark remembered and stitched into the cloth. Writing is the art of life.
“Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!” Ending lines from the classic “Bartleby the Scrivener”–a piece in every English major’s repertiore of required reading. “I would prefer not to.” Where did Melville get these words? Did he pass a bold young man on the street as he uttered these words to his father?
What sparks my creativity and thirst to compose? It is everything. Dream, monotony, task, pulse, sight. It is the world inside of me expressed.
