In Notebooks of the Mind: Explorations of Thinking, psycholinguist Vera John-Steiner cracks open the minds of 100 different creative individuals - writers, artists, composers, choreographers - via original interviews and an analysis of their existing notebooks, journals, letters, and scientific records, shedding light on the central elements and essential patterns of creative thought.
Via Kenneth Mikkelsen, Suvi Salo
Among the invisible tools of creative individuals is their ability to hold on to the specific texture of their past. Their skill is akin to that of a rural family who lives through the winter on food stored in their root cellar…The creative use of one’s past, however, requires a memory that is both powerful and selective.
A powerful and personally developed structuring of information — an active and selective memory — is as necessary for scientists as it is for poets.