Conceive. That is the word that means both the beginning in imagination and the end in creation.
No one has been able to define or synthesize that precarious, splendid, and perhaps untidy instant when the creative process begins. This is what the uniqueness of the artist is all about. The transcendent right of the artist is the right to create even though he may not always know what he is doing.
For me, drawing is everything, because it informs everything. It even informs my poetry. It's the way I begin everything.
[Writing something original from scratch], the initial process is way different. But once it exists and you start to actually work on making it real, then the approach is kind of the same, for me anyways.
The most important question for me when I begin working on a film is where to start. For a book, what makes you convinced there is a story that is worthwhile?
What I'm identifying with is the vision or the idea - whatever was the little nugget that started it.
We have this atomic idea of process where we want to believe that the creator of the book or the show had this whole brainy idea at the outset. As though there is something less about it if it comes out of the process of discovery.
It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action.
I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in ... but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape.
