toggling between imaginative and rational

• fiction-writing process (research conducted on a group of novelists) as a “voyage of discovery” that begins with a seed incident—an event or observation that inspires fascination and exploration and becomes the fertile ground on which creative growth occurs. Seed incidents tend to break the mind out of ordinary understanding and create new meanings for the writer … followed by a period of navigation between different creative worlds. At this stage, the writers oscillated between the “writingrealm”—a place of retreat from the world where the writer can plan and reflect on what has been written—and the “fictionworld” of their own making: an imaginative place in which the author engages with fiction characters and events as they unfold. … This constant toggling between imaginative and rational ways of thinking suggests a more complex, less linear account of fiction writing than the four-stage model can accommodate.

• novelist’s search for meaning and struggle to express a specific experience … as the writer slowly gains a sense of the direction in which he is moving, he can begin to move forward deliberately and with greater clarity

  “The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive.” Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson about creativity and life

• creative dance of contradictions

linked mentions for "toggling between imaginative and rational":

1. creative work brings disparate elements together
   Creative people are hubs of diverse interests, influences, behaviors, qualities, and ideas—and through their work, they find a way to bring these
   
2. creative dance of contradictions
   “a creature of many contradictions and a protean shapeshifter if there ever was one—said that he often reflected upon the many “selves” that he had