Rising Stars, The Blog!

Creativity of the Brain

Quote:Isaac Asimov, born on this day in 1920, once said: "Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers." What are your thoughts on this quote? Is writing simply a brain-to-hand exercise, or is there more involved?


I achieved a Degree late in life, in Literature. As part of this course I studied Creative Writing, this does not make me an expert, it just gave me a kick-start in the right direction. However, one of the first things we were taught was to free-write. It’s an exercise where you write without thinking about it; whatever comes into your head goes onto paper, then you look at what you’ve written and see what you can write from it. This avoids the thinking process altogether; it apparently, taps straight into the creative area of our brains.

Another tool is to try writing with your sub-dominant hand, this, again, connects with your subconscious, taking the thinking process out of the equation. On this evidence, it could seem that Isaac Asimov may be correct in his quote. I, however, think that there is much more to writing than a brain to hand exercise. It seems writers’ brains are wired differently to non-writers; they have a much more vivid imagination, sometimes, with whole worlds living inside their heads.

I remember travelling on a train one day for quite a long journey on my own. As I looked out of the window, all I saw were fields, but into my head came the start of a poem about a blade of grass. By the time the trip had finished, so was the poem. My daughter later commented, you must be the only one who can look out of a train window and do that. I just see fields; often I don’t even notice them. On the way home, I wrote one about a seagull who was watching us on the station. My daughter just laughed when she read it, not because the poem was funny, but because, again, she wouldn’t have even seen the bird.

She has never understood poetry, she studied English Literature for her A Levels and she got a good grade, but she never really understood it, never had a passion for it; she has a very logical mind. As writers, we have a passion for getting those words from the brain, through the fingers, and onto the page. Without passion, anything we do in life is a futile exercise. Why are some people fascinated by trains, others by stamps, it is how our brains are wired; writing is something most people do, though, so why do some expand, what is an everyday thing into something other people are fascinated by. How does a writer take that world inside their head and write it in such a way that others can see the world too? I don’t know the answer to that, I just know that my mind sees deeper into things, focusses on smaller things that others, who don’t write, don’t see. Therefore, it can be an eye to brain, then, brain to hand exercise. Alternatively, it may be ear to brain, then, a brain to hand exercise; it may come from something we hear just as much as we see.

But, somewhere within the process is creativity, an ability to turn what we see or hear, into something incredible; so between the input and the output there is a world that we don’t understand and I think Isaac Asimov, in this quote, has oversimplified it somewhat.