Work that Magic: Writing as Creative Power
It’s funny how we talk about writers in terms of their creative powers. What the hell does this even mean? Honestly, the first time I heard this phrase it conjured up images of writers as some modern-day Merlin, or hunched over their typewriters with enormous black pointy hats, a cat walking up and down their desks knocking over coffee mugs. I believe this image is relatively far from the truth, save for the pernicious cat. But I was recently confronted with this phrase again when I came across a 2016 Publishers Weekly article about Shirley Jackson which ended by saying Jackson “died at the height of her creative powers”. Most people know Jackson was obsessed with witchcraft, and the occult, and that she liked to tell people she was a witch. I believe she would have loved the idea that she had powers she could wield through her craft. After all, we often refer to witchcraft as “the craft”, and magic would be a product of this craft. As writers, we hone our craft- the art of making something out of nothing- a poem, a story, an essay. Shirley’s writing, or craft at the time of her death, was powerful, limitless. This was her power.
Taken another way, as a writer, you could say this creative power is your magic. Some people are born with heads for business, for math and science, for politics and medicine, for many things. But artists are born with something different, an insatiable appetite to learn, observe and make something from that observation, whether it be real or imaginary. To use our minds and our hands to translate or birth something new into the world. Something that wasn’t there moments before, now crafted for all the world to see. But isn’t that magic? A baker can take a little flour, yeast, salt and water, let sit and rise and then knead it with their hands, bake it and behold- bread. An artist takes their paints and canvas and they paint something they’ve only dreamt about. That image wasn’t there moments ago, but it’s there now. A writer takes a walk and has an idea for a story, goes home and as her children sleep, she writes a poem into being. That’s magic, too, isn’t it? Used as a verb, magic literally means to create. And as a noun, well, whatever other forces used from the universe to create a story or painting or poem, then that’s magic, too. A power. A creative power.
Other authors have spoken about the importance of creative power, too. For instance, Virginia Woolf noted that it was “odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order” and even Toni Morrison said that, “The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.” So, as writers, do we have special powers? We have something, I think.
Instead of creative power, what if we just call it magic? That as writers, artists, we wield a certain force in the world, a certain power- this ability to create, this need to create. Many years ago, a friend told me I was “a creative”. This was before I claimed the label of writer, before I was brave, but she knew me enough to know that I needed to create to feel whole. “You probably go a little crazy every day if you don’t create or make something, don’t you?” And after a moment of thinking about it, I realized she was right. That was me. Lost if I wasn’t creating something- food, art, music, it didn’t matter, it only mattered that my hands, my voice, my mind made something. Now, years later, thinking about my friend’s words, her observations, I realize she was talking about creative power. My power. My magic. And, if I didn’t use it to make something, craft something, I felt unhinged.
There’s something hopeful about this idea. That we as writers we possess a certain magic we can wield through our words. We all know words are powerful after all, and stories and poems can change lives. So, as we think about our craft, our creative power, and think about how and why we get words down on the page, maybe we should call it what it really is- magic.