I'm reading Adam Moss, The Work of Art. The author Michael Cunningham in his college days was interested in both art and writing. In his art classes he became discouraged, not because he was less talented than his fellow students but because he was less interested. Others would draw a picture, find fault with it, and then start again, endlessly enthusiastic to go on ("Like they never got tired of trying to paint"). Cunningham discovered that same passion in writing ("And I started writing and realized that I felt that way about writing."). It's not so much talent, he said, as interest. "I don't know if I've ever in all these years lost that fundamental interest in the proposition: here's ink, paper, words in a dictionary." (p. 59)
Without interest, we don't do the work. Interest keeps us going, draws us into the labyrinth. These days I'm much more systematic about channeling my interest. I sit with my coffee in the early morning, notebook and favorite pen in hand, listening for the rustle of story ideas. It begins with thinking about something else (why I like a book I've just read, a line in a magazine, a scene, a picture, a place); then something catches my attention. I feel a quiver like a fly in a web. I write without trying to see it clearly; just writing, letting things fall on the page as I listen. Slowly a scene, a setting, a voice, an idea; something sets off in a direction. I follow, stop and let it rest, come back to it and find it stronger. I begin writing scenes, dialog, not hurrying it, not trying to make something of it; letting it grow. Then at a certain point I feel I can begin to write a story. I stop, begin somewhere else, let it rest, start again. Each time the shape becomes a little clearer. I don't start typing until it takes on solid form in a notebook. The notebooks are full of stops and starts. When I finally start typing, I sometimes go back to the notebooks for certain phrases or scenes, but mostly by this time the pages are just debris. The mulch from which the Golem comes.