Creating...

“But no matter how much the mess and distortion make you want to despair, you can’t abandon the work because you’re chained to the bloody thing, it’s absolutely woven into your soul and you know you can never rest until you’ve brought truth out of all the distortion and beauty out of all the mess - but it’s agony, agony, agony - while simultaneously being the most wonderful rewarding experience in the world. And that’s the creative process which so few people understand.

It involves an indestructible sort of fidelity, an insane amount of hope, and indescribable, well…it’s love, isn’t it? There’s no other word for it. Mozart sweated and slaved and died young giving birth to all that music. He poured himself out and suffered. That’s the way it is. That’s creation. You can’t create without waste and mess and sheer undiluted slog. You can’t create without pain.

It’s all part of the process. It’s in the nature of things. So in the end every major disaster, every tiny error, every wrong turning, every fragment of discarded clay, all the blood, sweat and tears-everything has meaning. I give it meaning. I reuse, reshape, recast all that goes wrong so that in the end nothing is wasted and nothing is without significance and nothing ceases to be precious to me.”

~  Susan Howatch