Charlotte Wood is a successful and respected Australian author who, in addition to six longlisted, shortlisted, and awarded novels, and some other works, wrote a book called The Writer’s Room: Conversations About Writing (2016), and then turned that book into a podcast.
In 2021 Wood published another book on the writing experience, The Luminous Solution: Creativity, Resilience and the Inner Life. This is a valuable resource for writers or for people who want to think about creativity.
The book takes its title from Janet Burroway’s description of her method for writing a book (cited in Wood, The Luminous Solution, p. 19):
Once I’m working, the process is much the same in every genre: the effort to get myself to the computer, a period of grumpy struggle, despair, the luminous solution that appears in bed or bath, joyful work; repeat; repeat; repeat.
This quote begins the chapter “The Grumpy Struggle, Despair and the Luminous Solution: Nine Kinds of Creative Thinking” (pp. 19-43), in which Wood describes the findings of “a small longitudinal study of the cognitive processes of creativity” conducted within her writing group (p. 25).
A novel is a creative problem. A writer encounters a formless void where there is “no structure and no task; there is nothing to solve” (Jacob Getzels cited in Wood, p. 22), and they develop a sense that something is not quite right. They might even get themself into difficulty or troubling creative terrain, just so they can find their way out of it. They discover a problem. This problem will be “ill-defined, new, complex and demanding” (p. 23).
Wood’s nine kinds of creative thinking can be used to find and solve the problems that writers need throughout the creative process, though not all will be used during any one project. I’ll summarise them here.
1. Heat-seeking
Heat-seeking is the most important of Wood’s nine techniques. This is the “way artists separate promising from unpromising material by sensing and following the ‘power’ or ‘energy’ coming from any part of the work” (p. 27). Living material is the place where new possibilities may be developed. As Wood writes, “learning to trust one’s instinct for [heat-seeking] is vital” (p. 28). That said, a writer must learn to keep going even through long periods of producing only dead material.
2. Drilling, digging, and diving
Sometimes related to heat-seeking, drilling, digging and diving is the process of writing from mental spaces beyond the easily accessible, trivial or shallow. Writers use different metaphors for this, including spatial metaphors such as going deeper or sinking to the ocean’s deep, and light metaphors such as gloomy, hazy or half-lit. This kind of creative thinking, necessary to produce worthwhile writing, can be lonely, and it must be repeated across the course of the project.
3. Connecting and merging
Connecting and merging is Wood’s term for associative thought. When one brings together previously unconnected things, something novel emerges. This can be done instinctually, as is often the case in writing, and only detected in retrospect. When a writer is stuck, though, this technique can be employed intentionally. I first encountered this practice in a course on creativity and innovation. There, we were asked to list as many attributes as we could of a D-size battery, and then use those attributes and related associations to develop ways to improve health. This is a method to force divergent thinking through association. Merging the attributes even of an everyday object with your written work will often lead to something novel.
4. Circling and cycling
Circling and cycling is related to digging and diving. In this technique, writers (compulsively) rework their previously created material, at times from the beginning of a work all the way through to and beyond a problem area. This process can help smooth out unsatisfactory sections of the work, and it can identify core themes.
5. Disrupting or overturning
In this technique, a writer intentionally introduces an element that will disrupt their written work as it currently stands. This can be practiced when there is something unsatisfactory in the work, such as dead writing or a lack of meaning, that needs to be shifted, and can apply to the structures of writing and to the work’s subject or content.
6. Impersonating or embodying
Impersonating or embodying is, as it sounds, “the deliberate, imaginative borrowing of another’s perspective as a useful creative tool” (p. 32). This could be borrowing form, style or technique, or learning from the creative processes of other writers. This type of creative thinking can bring new energy to a written project and, as with connecting and merging, result in surprising and valuable outcomes.
7. Territory-mapping
The territory-mapping technique can be introduced occasionally after the early stages of a creative work when the work feels unpleasantly chaotic. It provides an overview of progress through list-making and diagrams. These can cover events, scenes written and planned, and concepts. Territory-mapping allows for better understanding of the current work and for planning the next stages of the work, and it can reduce anxiety and improve focus and morale.
8. Forecasting and hypothesising
Whereas territory-mapping relates to existing work, forecasting and hypothesising uses the same techniques for creative possibilities that have not yet emerged. It involves speculating on what might or will happen in the theme, event or style of a work. I also incorporates planning one's writing schedule.
9. Waiting or suspending
By writing or suspending, Wood refers to the incubation theory of creativity. Turning away from a project allows for the brain to work a problem through in a more relaxed and not immediately conscious way. At some stage, a writer might find themselves letting go or giving up on one area of their work that seems interesting but is difficult to develop or connect. Waiting for the luminous solution to arrive can be disconcerting, but it is a necessary part of the writing process.
In the final pages of “The Grumpy Struggle”, Wood reproduces an email she wrote during a bad writing week in which she lists reasons to keep going with the work. One item on the list stands out (p. 42, italics original):
Even a limited talent brings an obligation to explore it, develop it, exercise it, be grateful for it.