Recently finished Stephen King’s On Writing. King has an interesting philosophy on the creative process. Michelangelo used to say that the figure was already in the stone, he just removed unnecessary bits. King likewise believes that stories already exist like artifacts, it just takes a careful archeologist to reveal them without mucking them up. He may have something there.
I had a dream a couple of nights ago; something vague about which I don’t remember much. But thinking about it that morning led to a train of thought that in turn led to an idea for a horror story. I’d been toying with the idea of writing a horror novel, and had just read Stephen King, so I guess I was primed. Anyway, the idea came to me so vividly that I immediately sat down at my computer and started on a draft. Over the next twenty minutes, 750 words wrote themselves, complete with several juicy characters. Today that word total is around 2500. So maybe King is correct and the story was just sitting around my subconscious like an artifact. Bear in mind, I don’t know yet whether I uncovered a shard of pottery or an intact Etruscan vase. But sometimes you don’t have to dig too deep to find whatever it is.