What causes creativity to spring forth?  I like Seamus Heaney’s idea that it is not so much reactive as a generous overflow from an abundant internal source.

This then is truly creative writing.  It does arise from the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, but the overflow is not a reactive response to some stimulus in the world out there.  Instead, it is a spurt of abundance from a source within and it spills over to irrigate the world beyond the self. 

Source: Seamus Heaney, Finders Keepers: Selected prose 1971-2001 (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), p. 143

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