cold fire

Fixed fire: tending the hearth, creativity, life source.

Writer Jeffrey Eugenides explained the origins of his cult novel The Virgin Suicides in this article. A chance encounter, a dissonance between the tone of what was being said and the content became the cold fire that kept his project alive.

These moments of inspiration can be thought of as seeds, containing everything the project needs to unfold. I like to think of them as lightning. A kind of cold fire that contains the energy needed to create a book, artwork or a writing project. This is the part of the project that you should protect at all costs. This is what keeps the work alive, even when you don’t feel like doing it.

Lightning can exist for as little as a fraction of a second and if you can capture and contain it that is already a miracle. It’s the reason your project exists, it contains your drive to work on it, finish it, to give hours, days, and years of your life to it. But to sustain the work, you have to keep that cold fire burning.

Fire can go out if it isn’t tended, but if it grows too fast, it can be destructive. The work of art, or of creativity, is to keep something as wild and unpredictable as fire contained.

How can you do this?

On Saturday, I received a story like a vision projected in cold fire. I knew that if I didn’t capture it in the moment, it would burn out as fast as it arrived. I wrote a skeleton outline and sketched bare-bones scenes. I now have something to work with that is more than a scribbled note to self. I have so many of those notes in books and on my phone that feel so lifeless to me now. The animating force is gone. I know that, for me, to keep the fire tended, I have to write a little more than just a line.

But perhaps a line in a notebook or a quick voice note is perfect for you. Or if you are a visual person, a virtual moodboard could remind you of the feeling you had. A handful of images or colours that conjure the atmosphere could work.

The more you know what you are compelled by, drawn to, agitated by, or desperate to solve, the easier to communicate these emotions and desires through your work to others. The thing that will keep you alive and desiring and back at your desk in the dark between shifts or recording voice notes on your daily walk.

Can you pin down that lightning strike that began your current work-in-progress? How can you protect it so it can support you?