Kira Nelson: Lewis on the Creative Process

Lewis in On Three Ways of Writing for Children, states the reason for his writing a children’s story as being that it was the best art art form to communicate what it was he desired to relate (Lewis, 32). The story for Lewis had to be a fairytale, as that was the genre that best suited him (37). He likens the creative process of writing to bird watching, saying that in a certain sense he had never really ‘made’ a story at all. Rather than like talking or building, he would see pictures that had what he called a common flavor or smell that grouped them together. In this way, quiet and watchful, Lewis would witness these independent images begin to join up with one another (Lewis, 41-42). Lewis illustrates this by stating to the reader “I cannot direct my imagination, I can only follow the lead it gives me.” Unlike the Inklings’ academic writing, their narrative writing was not mapped out. Similarly, Tolkien writes of the difficulty of discriminating between how much of his narrative The Hobbit came ready made and how much was conscious invention. In this way, the narrative in which things and characters appear of their own accord can and do surprise even author of the story. In this way, one can almost imagine all the stories ever written and those not yet relayed as waiting somewhere, more or less in a piecemeal fashion, for the human imagination to discover and unearth them.