Speaking for myself, in so far
as it is possible to disentangle complex motives, the originating
impulse has never been with me pecuniary, or ambitious, or
philanthropic, or even communicative. It has been simply and solely
the intense pleasure of putting as emphatically and beautifully and
appropriately as possible into words, an idea of a definite kind.
The creative impulse is not like any other that I know; some
thought, scene, picture, darts spontaneously into the mind. The
intelligence instantly sets to work arranging, subdividing,
foreseeing, extending, amplifying. Much is done by some unconscious
cerebration; for I have often planned the development of a thought
in a few minutes, and then dropped it; yet an hour or two later the
whole thing seems ready to be written.
Moreover, the actual start is a pleasure so keen and delightful as
to have an almost physical and sensuous joy about it. The very act
of writing has become so mechanical that there is nothing in the
least fatiguing about it, though I have heard some writers say
otherwise; while the process is actually going on, one loses all
count of time and place; the clock on the mantelpiece seems to leap
miraculously forward; while the mind knows exactly when to desist,
so that the leaving off is like the turning of a tap, the stream
being instantaneously cut off. I do not recollect having ever
forced myself to write, except under the stress of illness, nor do
I ever recollect its being anything but the purest pleasure from
beginning to end.
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