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The question

How does a new piece of work usually begin for you?

Originally asked

The Paris Review, to novelists and poets, The Art of Fiction

A recurrent craft question in The Paris Review's Art of Fiction interviews; wording varies between character, theme, first sentence, image, and idea.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Jason Williamson

Musician

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
We never enter into new recording projects thinking, “Yeah we’re gonna write something great here!” A lot of the time it’s a feeling like, can we write anything else? Is there anything else to say? You know what I mean? There’ll always be things to say, but if we can’t dress it up right, then it’s game over. It feels like a pretty honest place to start from: What is there to say?

T. Cole Rachel, The Creative Independent interview, 13 March 2017 source ↗

Others on this question

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I can’t say there’s a specific place to begin when it comes to creating virtual identities, but it’s important to consider them in the longview. What stays here—in web pages, caches, and hard drives—might be the things that people retain of you in the future ahead. Where scholars might spend years studying the journals and letters of our predecessors, these personal accounts are infinitely more robust. Even if it is a private pursuit, an external drive full of personal exploration can be such a gift to those not here yet.
Recorded Willa Köerner, The Creative Independent interview source ↗
Mellody Hobson Co-chief executive and president of Ariel Investments
So I started with this idea of could we do private equity totally differently than had been done? One of the major features of what we do is something called demand aggregation, where we go to corporations and what we call the CPO, the purchasing officers of those - chief purchasing officers. We developed a council of Fortune 500 companies.
Recorded Kathleen J. McInnis, Smart Women, Smart Power podcast, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 28 August 2024 source ↗
Dawn Clements American contemporary artist and educator
When I start out to make a panoramic piece, I often work from left to right. But when a small scrap of a drawing turns into a giant drawing the progress is less linear, a more intuitive process. “Untitled (Color Kitchen)” started with the flowers. Mariah Corrigan cut me these beautiful old roses, which I put in a yellow pitcher. The next day I was all packed up and walking out the door to go to my studio when I saw the roses and thought, “Those flowers are going to be gone by tomorrow.” So I stayed home and painted them just to always remember them. Eventually the drawing grew to include the table, the wall, the curtain, and the next wall
Recorded Eve Aschheim, The Brooklyn Rail, In Conversation, 1 October 2007 source ↗
Ron Gorchov American artist
It’s completely spatial. I follow Graham on that a lot. I really think that painting is about space and proportions and where things go; it’s what painting is. Form, if it isn’t the right color, it is not in the right place. And you know you can actually change the relationships a lot by changing the color a little. Yesterday, something happened in my studio. I realized that new things come to you all the time when you work in art. I had forgotten that if Graham wanted to make something slightly off-white, he used violet instead of greying it, and it’s really good. So, last night I remembered that, and the painting worked out.
Recorded Nathlie Provosty, The Brooklyn Rail, In Conversation, 1 April 2014 source ↗

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