When I took down the Demon Muse site in 2012, this did away with the couple of interviews that I had conducted for the site. A few weeks ago I republished the one with John Langan here. Now the circle is complete, because here’s the resurrection of my interview/conversation with T. M. Wright:
An Unleashed Imagination: Conversation with T. M. Wright
Many of you surely know Terry as the author of the classic horror novels Strange Seed (1978) and A Manhattan Ghost Story (1984). In this interview he talks about his creative process and his thoughts on the relationship between muse-like inspiration and hard work. Here’s a sample:
Getting in touch with the creative unconscious is probably a tricky thing to do. After all, it’s the “unconscious” for a reason: it doesn’t want to be gotten in touch with. But to find that true creative voice, my advice would be to forget it’s there, and simply write. It doesn’t really matter what you write as long as it’s got some kind of flow, strange or otherwise. How much should you write? As much as you can until it becomes drudgery. When that happens, back away.
John Cleese from Monty Python had really good advice I think he said write something and when you wake up the next morning you will feel clean like a new person and then read over your writing, it will sound ridiculous, but keep editing and revising and keep sleeping on it until when you awake as a new person again it makes sense to the new you . Something around about that paraphrased. In short, sleep on it. Write, go to sleep, wake up and review your writing, revise it, go to sleep, etc.
The John Cleese method sounds similar to Graham Sutton’s method of writing lyrics for Bark Psychosis. He described a long process of gathering bits from dreams, conversations, and random musings and getting them down on paper, then sealing them away and not reading them for months. He said their meaning would shift and reveal strange connections, much like William Burroughs’ cut ups do. I guess this is like an extended, long take cut up of the unconscious.