2021 Volume 22 Issue 1 Pages 9-53
This paper examines my writing process in an attempt to determine how my knowledge of cultural anthropology informs the fiction I write. Although I have always assumed that what I have learned from this field significantly impacts my writing, I have never explored the connection in any depth. Receiving the JASCA Award gave me an opportunity to seriously examine the relationship of cultural anthropology to the stories I write. In the end, however, many facets remained unclear because the flow of thought vanished whenever I drew too close. Stories are something which I bring into being yet which also come into being of their own accord. As such, even though I am consciously involved in the writing process, I am often mystified by the way my brain works.
Still, through this exploration, two things became clear: First, what enables me to write is a chain of mental associations triggered by a vivid image leaping unbidden into my mind, and second, those associations, which spread like fire once ignited, are deeply connected to my cultural anthropological studies and fieldwork. I hope this paper will shed light on how individual experience is involved in the process by which the human brain gives birth to stories, a creative process that is, in a sense, universal.