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Salman Rushdie on "Art of Creative Process"

As a student of history he was not trained in literature. This itself was a significant characteristic for his discovery as a writer. A Bombay born child who became one of the greatest writers of the English literature. What caused this transformation; reading, observing, and trying to make sense of the world. This approach of openness is the first step of self-discovery; the Buddha moment. Writing for him is a task of self-discovery. You don't know when you start where will it end. If you know about your end, all the masteries and the fun of journey are lost in that predetermination. Michel Foucault once said, "I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for love relationships is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don’t know where it will end".


Creative process requires idiosyncrasies. If one is so overwhelmed by the theories of other thinkers or writers one can't start writing the sentences; the theoretical noises make it impossible to be honest with the experiences one has in his own life. It's fantastic to be a good reader, but for a creative genius the musicality of words would appear through ethics of persistent works, writing, editing, and re-editing before one feels happy about it. Sometimes, one has to throw many pages in the dustbin before a few fresh and lively things appear in the joyful creative process. One cannot please all, as he believes. But I think, creative process has its own "surplus enjoyment" (Jacques Lacan). How can someone be honest in the consequentialist approach of creativity? "Reader's choice theory" is significant for making a work best selling. But every popular thing is not necessarily good or beautiful. Writing is, if at all self-discovery, not about pleasing anyone; at least one must avoid pretending to please readers so as to make a work popular. Second barrier of creative process is too much emphasis on the method and procedure. There is no single method, no single procedure for creativity. Mechanical vision of writing is self-annihilationary in its characteristics. The third problem is about the mentality that things shall just come out without any attempt to

to arrange the words. Rushdie rightly puts emphasis on the hard work or to treat writing as your first love. When someone is so immersed in the world of words, sentences, and paragraphs, one is bound to perfect the art of writing. Of course, passion and patience are the two noble virtues of a writer. To become a writer means just start and develop a rhyme and rhythm. The moment music is broken into pieces; one losses the zone of creativity, until bits and pieces are collected again. One cannot complete a work by wishful thinking. Writing requires hard work, passion, regularity, perseverance, and the understanding of the landscape; the world of the words. You don't simply write for full stops. Your commas and semi-columns are equally significant for a future to come. Foucault in this respect rightly said, "I don't write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me". It's good to mistake many times so that a journey of mistakes itself be a journey to be proud of. Thanks Salman Rushdie for inspiring to be a creative artist.

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