Stimulus in creative writing – wrangling the experiential unresolved

ABSTRACT What is the stimulus for creative writing at a primary moment of narrative composition, and beyond? Can we distinguish between stimulus-for and stimulus-in creative writing and, if so, what is the relationship between those states? I am prompted to write by an affect-driven response to an unresolved idea or experience – this is the impetus-for writing. It triggers the activity of writing at a primary moment of narrative composition. Plotting fictional possibilities is an act of deep, sensory imagining – bringing feeling to thinking, asking what ideas ‘feel like’. I refer to this as a process of ideasthetic imagining, springboarding from Neuroscientist Danko Nikolić’s concepts of ‘qualia’ or feeling and ideasthesia or ‘sensing concepts’ (The generative evolution of narrative detail is a forward-moving and yet backscattering, iterative and overdetermined way of working – a pattern of practice that is underpinned by psychodynamic processes where past and actual stimulus–rest interactions facilitate deep, sensory engagement with narrative material. Exploring stimulus in creative writing practice, in physiological and psychological terms, reveals that stimulus-for becomes stimulus-in, as primary affective immersion generates deep, sensory imagining – bringing (past) feeling to (present) thinking.