Writing the Unexpected: Some Spooky Creative Writing Methods

Creative practice, no matter how we explain, rationalise and quantify it, remains an indefinable, mysterious, even mystical activity. What we call exegetical explication of the creative process is an outsider’s, often after-the-fact attempt to understand what we do, labouring with inadequate utilitarian language in order to account for what is largely an unconscious or rationally inaccessible process, translating it into the clumsy language of academic discourse and propositional knowledge. This presentation explores such creative practices as bowerbirding, serendipity, synchronicity, intuitive archaeology and other ‘spooky arts’ (Mailer) and employs what Dominique Hecq calls ‘active consciousness’ in attempting to explain them.