Something out of nothing

Authors create their own universes, their own cosmology, says Amy Tan the mischievous author of The Bonesetters Daughter, The Joy Luck Club and Saving Fish from Drowning.

Which begs the question, "if there is a creator of the universe, is she a writer?"

Tan explains the ambiguity of the creative process to the TED crowd using a curiously warped interpretation of modern day physics. She equates the nebulousness or indeterminism of the creative act with the uncertainty principle of quantum dynamics and the "11 levels of anxiety" experienced by a writer with the 11 dimensions of string theory.

Tan jokes that creativity has three sources. Nature, nurture and nightmares. Nature involves some inherited genes. Nurture is a dash of childhood trauma. And the nightmares are the psychoses, depression and the temporal lobes seizures she personally has experienced.



Encouraged as a child to become a doctor or concert pianist, Tan chose to ignore her teacher's assessment of her literary talent of B/B+/B- grades and become an "artistic arranger of words".

On stage she is a living, breathing version of her own story telling process. She starts with nothing except some ambiguous concepts which seem unconnected - accidents, serendipity, ambiguity, balance, intentions, and peripheral exploring - then weaves them into a compelling narrative.

The creative act, she says, is about answering three questions. Why do things happen? How do things happen? How do I make things happen?

She asks if ideas turn up serendipitously just when you need them or do artists simply discover new ways of seeing the world and become aware of patterns that were already there.

She surmises the answer could be either/both, (just like the famous experiment where light passing through a slit behaves both as a particle and a wave - my words, not hers).

Tan also reveals that as she writes a story, she learns from the "life" experiences and interactions of the characters, and in doing so, she "becomes the story".

Over time, each story develops it's own internal consistency. She tells the story of meeting a man who created towers of rocks, large and small, perfectly balanced, one of top of the other, who explained the principle that "there is a place of balance" for everything in life.

But Tan also says that a light touch is required. Push too hard and creativity is stifled. Write around the periphery of what you don't know and something new emerges.

So here's a workshop to explore some of Amy Tan's ideas about the creative process?

1. What is the something in your nothing? What unusual pattern or thing have you observed/noticed or been amazed about lately to which you are attracted? e.g. the chewing gum stuck to the pavement.
2. Thinking about your unusual pattern/thing, in what other situations have you seen such a pattern, and why might it be interesting to others? e.g. the mess we humans leave behind, which we ignore in our daily lives.
3. Create a minor solar system of characters, and a scenario, to explore your interesting pattern/thing. e.g. the derelict sleeping on the pavement with accumulated junk/garbage all around, who dreamed of being a.....
4. How did your character get to be in this stuation?
5. As you start creating your character and the story, what can you now observe around you that you did not see before?
6. As you start creating your story, what do you learn from the character, and especially how does this learning enrich who you are?
7. If you were now faced with death, what stories do you now feel compelled to tell, as urgently as possible to your friends, family, the world?