ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some work with memory and imagination. Memory often works in a spontaneous manner, by way of association. One may catch a certain smell and all of a sudden one is cast back ten, fifteen or twenty years. Memory often works like this: one perception leads to a memory, which in turn leads to another memory and so on. These associative and resonant memories seem at first glance to be mostly unconscious, serendipitous and hard to predict. There are, however, ways of prompting such thought processes. Our memories are an infinite resource, but are not just made up of personal moments and individual detail. Writers have always found ways to overcome the difficulties presented by subjects that are either too close to them or just beyond their direct experience. Most psychological models of the creative process include an unconscious stage, sometimes called the ‘incubation period’, where ideas hatch and develop beyond our conscious control or awareness.
