The canonical (or stereotypical) view of the creative figure is one who is struck by inspiration, often after long periods of hard labor and frustration. This is an experience that lots of creative people have, but not all of them like it; when I was writing REST, I found an especially striking case of a famous scientist who seemed to dislike the fact that he couldn’t do science in an entirely orderly, directed fashion: that of Hermann von Helmholtz, the great German physicist. (Here’s a good overview of his achievements, which really were pretty amazing.)

In his Popular Lectures (especially on pp. 282-283), Helmholtz writes:

I have often been in the unpleasant position of having to wait for lucky ideas, I have had some experience as to when and where they came to me, which will perhaps be useful to others. They often steal into the line of thought without their importance being at first understood; then afterwards some accidental circumstance shows how and under what conditions they have originated; they are present, otherwise, without our knowing whence they came. In other cases they occur suddenly, without exertion, like an inspiration.

What’s interesting about this position is that while Helmholtz admits that “moments of fruitful thought were indeed very delightful,” he also seemed frustrated by the fact that his own science couldn’t proceed exclusively through logical, conscious reasoning:

I had to compare myself with an Alpine climber, who, not knowing the way, ascends slowly and with toil, and is often compelled to retrace his steps because his progress is stopped; sometimes by reasoning, and sometimes by accident, he hits upon traces of a fresh path, which again leads him a little further; and finally, when he has reached the goal, he finds to his annoyance a royal road on which he might have ridden up if he had been clever enough to find the right starting-point at the outset. In my memoirs I have, of course, not given the reader an account of my wanderings, but I have described the beaten path on which he can now reach the summit without trouble.

I suspect lots of creative people would admit to some kind of frustration with their creative processes, or with the ways they have to adjust their lives to suit their muses. I love those moments when writing feels effortless and new ideas just seem to appear; I don’t love that those tend to happen before dawn, and that I’ve got to do an enormous amount of work to set up for them.

For me (and for people who we remember as really creative), moments of insight are like performances or sports: there’s an incredible amount of rehearsal and practice and field setup goes into an event that, to spectators, is all drama and spontaneity and surprise. I’d love to be able to just enjoy the show; but my creative mind demands that I play a combination of coach, show runner, theatre tech, and producer as well.

Finally, Helmholtz goes on to say a little about his own experience with moments of illumination, as Graham Wallas would put it:

As far as my experience goes, they never came at the desk or to a tired brain. I have always so turned my problem about in all directions that I could see in my mind its turns and complications, and run through them freely without writing them down. But to reach that stage was not usually possible without long preliminary work. Then, after the fatigue from this had passed away, an hour of perfect bodily repose and quiet comfort was necessary before the good ideas came. They often came actually in the morning on waking…. But, as I have stated in Heidelberg, they were usually apt to come when comfortably ascending woody hills in sunny weather. The smallest quantity of alcoholic drink seemed to frighten them away.