What it's like.

What's it like to start a new piece of work?

In discussing this matter with my students I sometimes get the feeling that they feel there's a single formula to it, a definite way that creativity happens.
No such equation exists, of course. Experience has taught me that.
There's a pleasurable state one reaches – of making and thinking all at once - and in many ways a point of not thinking, actually.
One succumbs, having put in place entirely personal details of materials or environment that have been discovered through trial and error to help the process (see my recent post below).

Sometimes it feels like this image (from my 2010 edition 'Day & Night/Night & Day').

You just fall into it, powerlessly.

And trust that you'll catch yourself. And the thing that saves you is the new work you make.

Is what I've just written here a candidate for Private Eye's 'Pseud's Corner'?
No - I think I believe it to be true.