Stephen King: Artist Submission to Creativity’s Mystique & the Discovery of Meaning

In Faith, Hope, and Carnage, musician Nick Cave reflects on his songwriting process. He mentions that his compositions often begin as a “divine spark,” or an intuitive whim, that he then develops. His description of this sudden impulse suggests that part of his process is out of his hands. Cave explains, “The creative impulse to me is a form of bafflement,” again designating creativity as not entirely within the artist’s comprehension or control, thus potentially perplexing the artist because they are seemingly the person solely responsible for their creative generation. Peculiarly, Cave insists he is led by, not leading, this entity, as if it were a separate, autonomous guide, dictating his every move. For Cave, this means that when creating something, he isn’t always sure what it means and must “surrender” to the insistent creative force.

Another strange phenomenon occurs for Cave during his creative process: the “real meaning” of his songs emerges when he performs the lyrics and music aloud. This could be understood as the “spirit” of the creation, finally able to come alive when the work is enacted, or the uncovering of a meaning already present in the artist’s subconscious mind that becomes observable when the work moves beyond the artist's intention and into the external world of form, free from confinement within the dynamic mind of its creator.

Having written books and stories that traverse a breadth of genres, author Stephen King is widely known as a (if not the) master of horror. King has expressed sentiments similar to those of Cave about receiving sudden bursts of ideas and having to follow these creative streaks, wherever they go, thereby sometimes being left surprised about a particular plot development or character’s fate. In one speech, King cryptically retorted, “I don’t make the news; I just report it,” explaining how when writing Cujo, he didn’t want or anticipate the death of a young character, but that it is simply what happened. Although remarked in jest, this reveals how King understands his creative process, that is, as something not entirely his.

King occasionally realizes how the plot of his stories will unfold only whilst writing them. Like Cave, he has also made statements alluding to the notion that meaning can arise amidst the creation or culmination of an artwork. For instance, when interviewed in 2013 about writing his murder mystery novel, Joyland, King said, “I got near the end of the book before I realized who [the killer] was.” His statements are puzzling because, in theory, King should possess absolute directive authority over his books as their author. Instead, he appears to imply that his works, like the characters that inhabit them, have lives of their own.