But that’s rather beside the point. What I was getting at was that automatically attributing the mystery of the creative process to a divine source is an error in reasoning. Here’s why I say that.

Again and again throughout the ascent of humans as sentient beings the mysteries of the natural world have been demystified. There was a time, not that long ago, when it was understood that the sun was a divine being, an intelligent force, a God, by pretty much every human on the planet. The particulars of the Sun God varied widely, but at the time that was our best explanation for the mystery of this fiery orb that ruled the planet. But the sun has been demystified, and only the most primitive people today, those still stuck in the Ancient Ways (ignorance) of pre-history, believe such a notion.

Over and over again man has increased his understanding of the natural world and divine explanations have fallen by the wayside. So why cling to divine explanations for today’s remaining mysteries? Such thinking ignores man’s entire history of continual, ongoing Enlightenment.

The creative process is indeed a mystery, as are so many other cognitive functions. By the same token, myriad cognitive processes which were just as mysterious only decades ago are now well understood. As time goes by, we will continue, inexorably, to demystify the human brain. Given this long history of discovery, isn’t it much more likely that, though currently mysterious, the creative process is a completely natural process, something our remarkable human brains are wired to do?

Where do our stories come from? I maintain that every single one comes from “in here”, our uniquely human imagination. So why is it that some stories seem much more complete to us, as though they have already been created and we are merely taking dictation? Who knows? That’s part of what we don’t yet understand. But don’t you find it interesting that these remarkable “gift stories” are unique to us as individuals? That is, they always seem to bear our personal signatures. They are never in a foreign language, for one thing. And they never seem to contain vocabulary that is unknown to us. And they are invariably built up from the scaffolding or our own personal experiences, interests, obsessions, special knowledge, artistic preferences, inclinations, etc.

You mentioned JKR. HP “came” to her because of all those parts of what make up the unique human JKR coalescing into her personal vision of a compelling story. But HP is certainly not something completely new on this earth. Magic, YA lit, British boarding schools, the Chosen One, and on an on, she didn’t create these elements. Her brilliance was in blending them in a new way.

Ultimately I just think the idea that there is some divine source picking and choosing which writers will be given which stories to write is a lot more problematic, on so many levels, that the idea that all stories evolve out of the many things that make humans human: our unlimited imagination, our social need to communicate, our self-awareness, our curiosity, our sense of wonder, our contemplation of life and death. All of which emanate, quite simply, from the completely natural processes of the remarkable human brain. I think it’s okay to take some credit for our ideas. Because they come from us, they are unique to us. I couldn’t write your books, and you couldn’t write mine. And that’s a beautiful thing, and exactly as it should be.

Think about it. Reading a book is a huge investment. It’s not like watching a movie, where we spend two hours in a theater and that’s it. We can risk watching crap movies. Risking reading crappy long books? Less likely.

I guess I worded things different. When people talk about God, soul, purpose, passion, paths in life, we may be talking about one thing, living a guided life. Basically, we as people have gifts. Whether we choose to share them or not is individual. But these gifts start in the formless, what you termed as out there. We as humans can bring them into the form: bridges, skyscrapers, children, books, government, etc. Everything man made started out as an idea. It’s impossible to know whether we are responsible or if some divine force helped us create these ideas. I can tell you, in my own experience, and what I’ve read from others like Arthur Miller, Robin Williams, Stephanie Meyers, and even the great Joanne Rowling have had the stories ‘given’ to them, stories chose them, or some how that idea fell into their laps. However you want to word it. My story that I’m writing definitely fell into my lap and has never let me go, despite my efforts. The way it germinated and matured has surprised me to no end. It’s one of the very few things that I truly love and keeps me going, aside from my survival instincts. I am human.

One last thing, this is just a response to your comment, which I completely appreciate. And this is in no way to dispute your experiences and opinions, and I write these posts from my own experiences only. I can’t really comment on others experiences, since they are their own.

There is no place “out there” where stories reside, waiting for specially selected individuals to reveal them. They always come from inside us, our personal vision.

If they came from a “divine source”, how would you explain “Twilight”?

And I totally agree with your observations here about “writing what you know”. Hell, I’ve never heard a satisfying explanation of what that even means. Like in my book: Am I supposed to murder someone so I can write about my MC murdering someone? Really?

All I can say is this: Write On, Friend!

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