It's to the best of our knowledge from PRX.

Have you ever tried asking an artist or writer how she does what she does?

And have you noticed that even the most creative people can't really explain it?

When a book is going well, the book knows a lot more than I do. And I just follow it. And also, the characters will take me to places that I was completely unprepared for.

Seriously, the book writes itself? What I think is that when you're in that flow state where it feels like you lose your sense

of self and time and place and it feels like those creative thoughts are coming through you.

They're coming from someplace else because the part of your brain, this dorsalateral prefrontal

cortex, is turned down. So it does feel like it's coming through you from someplace else.

I'm Anne Strange Champs on this hour, demystifying creativity.

Is it magic or neuroscience?

Or both.

From WPR.

It's to the best of our knowledge.

I'm Anne Strain Champs.

A writer sits down at a keyboard and somehow, some way, characters appear.

They walk and talk, drink bourbon.

Mow the lawn, have children, cry, laugh, yell, die. How does that happen? What sparks all that?

Writers are often very distressed by a question that comes our way all the time.

Novelist Siri Hustfed.

Someone in the audience after you've given a reading stands up and asks,

where do you get your ideas?

And most writers are annoyed and stumped, but this is in fact a profound question.

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