C.S. Lewis on How to Structure the Days of a Creative Life and Train the Receptive Imagination

There are, in my experience, two fundaments of the creative life: putting yourself regularly in the path of wonder and getting out of your own way in order to receive what you encounter there. Wonder, like enchantment, is not something you can control or plan for or will — it is something that befalls you, overcomes you, pours upon you spontaneous and unbidden. Paradoxically, what makes such spontaneity possible is structure — an organizing principle for the hours of the day that makes room, and reserves it, for these moments of magic. This is not simple to configure and not… read article