Graham Wallas, the social psychologist, was interested in the creative process. He contended there were four stages in the formation of a new thought: (1) preparation, (2) incubation, (3) illumination and (4) verification. We tend to overlook the second step.
We spend a great deal of time preparing ourselves with an education. We study a subject. But we keep trying to reason our way toward an answer to our question, rather than letting the unconscious processes work.
Wallas, who studied the creative processes of the physicist Hermann von Helmholtz and the mathematician Henri Poincairé, suggested a good walk.
Wallas said it would be interesting to read a series of biographies of creative people to see how they worked. He suspected we’d see more clearly the importance of letting an idea incubate.
Poincairé, for example, had a breakthrough in mathematics after a period of reserve duty in the military. A.R. Wallace came up with a theory of evolution while confined by malaria to his cabin at sea. Darwin suffered from ill health and was urged, even as a child, to rest often.
I mention this because almost all the writers I know are dismayed when an idea is incubating. They feel as if they are not doing anything. They are not being productive.
I’ve been curiously immune from that anxiety all my life. Perhaps there’s an advantage to a natural turn toward laziness.
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