THE WRITER TELLS - THE CREATIVE PROCESS IN THE WRITING OF LITERARY FICTION

The experience of creating fiction, a topic that has been taken up ind ependently in literary publications and in psychological works on crea tivity, is a promising topic for interdisciplinary conversation. I int erviewed five contemporary fiction writers, focusing on their experien ces in creating fiction. The commonalities, along with theoretical con cepts from psychology, phenomenology, and literary theory, allowed me To construct a tentative modal account. Writers identified seed incide nts whose meanings went beyond their narrative understanding and so st imulated exploration and discovery. Writing progressed through alterna tions between a ''writingrealm'' (in which the writer withdrew from ev eryday life with intentions to write, to plan actively for specific wo rks, and to reflect on what had been written) and a ''fictionworld'' ( which was described in more passive terms, in which story elements cam e to the writer as narrative improvisation unfolded). Like other creat ive endeavors, the creative process in fiction writing is a voyage of discovery bur differs from most other arts and sciences (even the art of poetry) in one of its major modes of thought-narrative improvisatio n, a nonreflective mode that typically involves stances in a fictionwo rld from viewpoints different from one's own. A response to the sugges ted account by one of the interviewed writers appears as a postscript to this article.