I lead an ordinary life, with husband and girls, and I don’t think any stranger meeting me would know I was a writer or anything else. I don’t feel any different from other people except that I sometimes think my mind works more quickly, which sounds very conceited …
It might also interest you to know that my books are translated into dozens of different languages – Malay, French, Fijian, Japanese, Indian, Finnish, Icelandic, Greek, all kinds – and yet, although my characters are typically British children, with the British ideals of fair play, loyalty, generosity and so on, all these nations love my books, and clamour for them. The one that clamours most, oddly enough, is Germany. Even the adults read them there – I’d love to be told why and how this should be – perhaps you can enlighten me!
I should perhaps say that I recognise many things that are thrown up from my under-mind, transmuted and changed – a castle seen long ago – a dog – a small child – woods long forgotten, in a new setting …
Peter McKellar to Enid Blyton, February 23rd, 1953
You have given a most lucid and invaluable account of your imagery, and I am specially interested in the fact that it all began with hypnagogic imagery – the ‘night stories’ to which you refer. One of the interesting things about human imagining, it strikes me, is the very small part of human imaginings that has been recorded, an in finitely small part of what has been experienced by people. It is most interesting to discover a writer who has made a systematic account to record such a large part of her imaging in the way you have. Very little seems to be known about ‘night stories’, though vivid imaging has been itself pretty fully studied. The pioneer work of E. R. Jaensch: Eidetic Imagery (Kegan Paul, 1930), you will probably know. I note with interest your feeling as a child that everybody must have such imagery, and such night stories. The usual incidence of eidetic imagery, in ordinary waking life, with adults is in the vicinity of about 7 per cent. (It is very much greater with children.) My own study of the largely-uninvestigated night stories or hypnagogic images indicates that they occur with about 40 per cent of adults, though as I haven’t got very far with the investigation these figures would be very approximate. They refer, of course, only to the having of them and not to any very marked development of the faculty concerned. They are usually of a brief, and fleeting kind. Some of those I have accounts of are amusing, some a little terrifying, some visual, others auditory, but I have a few cases of similarly vivid imagery before sleep, for touch, temperature and even smell experiences. Your detailed account of your own, your development of this usually neglected tendency, and your putting it all to such a useful purpose, is of extreme interest to this study …
You did kindly offer to answer any additional questions. There are just one or two that arise. The first relates to your postscript about your recognising some, but I take it not all, of the things imaged as things previously seen and heard. If there is anything you feel you would like to add to this it would be of great interest. I find with the hypnagogic images that some people are totally unable to recognise the imagery as involving anything they remember ever having previously seen. Others, however, find the before sleep imagery closely related usually to the experiences of the previous day. The difference between the two may prove to be important. Again, you mention that your ‘private cinema screen’ began with the before sleeping imagery. I take it, however, that the major part of your writing is done with similar imagery in the ordinary waking state. Do, however, the ‘night stories’ themselves still go on (as opposed to the actual dreams to which you refer), and do you find that these night stories also yield story material? Anything you could add about the relation between the before sleep and the ordinary day-time imagery would be of great interest. My only other question is the obvious one of whether you have tried out other methods of recording the stories than typing. If you have, as you probably will have, did you find it less satisfactory? (in short, is the total situation, complete with the movements of typing, the best for recording these stories?)
Enid Blyton to Peter McKellar, February 26th, 1953
Thank you for your very interesting letter. I’m very glad mine was of use to you. To tell you the truth I’d be very pleased if I could find an explanation of the goings-on of my sub-conscious!! It startles me sometimes.
Before I forget – I’ve told the publisher of the Little Noddy books (my most popular series for the youngest age-group) to send your small daughter the first three of these books (there are 6 or 7) because I think she may like them. If you read them yourself to her you will see how her imagination gets hold of Little Noddy, and makes him come alive to her! One of the great reasons for reading imaginative books to very young children is to stir their imaginations and their thinking – to set their minds ticking – and it’s interesting to see how even a 2½ year old will sometimes take enormous strides forward as soon as he is read to – but the books or stories must, of course, be absolutely suited to his understanding.
I think hundreds upon hundreds of writers have just the same power of imagination as I have – but I have noticed that only a
very
small percentage have the easy access to it that I have. Some ‘wait for inspiration’, some labour and wrestle with their imagination (and the labour shows in their work!), the lucky few have their imagination at their command, and then the whole thing is effortless – a sheer delight. That is where I am so lucky – the gates are so easy to open and also, I think, the fact that I am so close to my imagination prevents my being badly-balanced, temperamental or moody as so many creative people are.
My night ‘images’ were always more than merely ‘images’ – they were a coherent line of events in the form of a narrative. My simile of a ‘private cinema screen’ is the best I can think of. But it’s a 3-dimensional screen, complete with sound, smell and taste – and feeling! This is why I can describe things so realistically in my stories, ‘as if I had been there’. I
have
been there – but only in my imagination! This is probably why all the artists that work for me find my stories easy to illustrate – they visualise the picture at once from the words.
I did not know that I was ‘training’ my under-mind (or subconscious) in its ability to create and imagine, but I was, of course, and have been all these years. I knew how to get in touch with it, I knew how to be at one with it. I knew how to pull out the imaginings or put them into words – and now, with so much practice, a whole book is formed in a few days, characters alive and complete, incidents, jokes, everything – and my conscious mind has nothing whatever to do with it except record what it sees – by means of my typewriter. Sometimes I find it very strange. For instance, I have been asked to write a book, which will deal with a scout or scouts, with kindness to animals and with a definite religious thread going through it. No more instructions than that.
Now the ordinary writer would begin to think consciously about the book, plans would take shape in his mind, he would arrange a scheme and so on – and then write the book according to what he had consciously planned.
All I have done is to say firmly to myself – there must be a scout or scouts – animals – and ethics – and I leave it at that and don’t think another word about it. But those conscious directions penetrate down into the imagination, and when, on Monday, I sit down to begin the book, it will already be complete in my imagination – characters (a scout or scouts will be there) setting, animals, everything. No thought or planning will have gone to the book – it will well up spontaneously and rhythmically, suited for the particular age of child, and will be the right length. This is sometimes rather weird, as you can imagine.
Your question about recognising things that are thrown up from my imagination is an interesting one. There are, for instance, many islands in my stories, many old castles, many caves – all things that have attracted me in my travels. These things come up time and again in my stories, changed, sometimes almost unrecognisable – and then I see a detail that makes me say – yes – that’s one of the Cheddar Caves, surely! Characters also remind me of people I have met – I think my imagination contains all the things I have ever seen or heard, things my conscious mind has long forgotten – and they have all been jumbled about till a light penetrates into the mass, and a happening here or an object there is taken out, transmuted, or formed into something that takes a natural and rightful place in the story – or I may recognise it – or I may not – I don’t think that I use anything I have not seen or experienced – I don’t think I could. I don’t think one can take out of one’s mind more than one puts in. In the same way I do not think, for instance, that a man can write a funny book if he has no sense of humour – however powerful his imagination – because his mind does not deal with humour! Our books are facets of ourselves.
My before-sleep imagery (when falling off to sleep) is nothing whatever to do with so-called ‘night stories’ – completely different – just a jumble, fleeting, and of no account, The ‘night stories’ I had were always coherent – and went on evolving like a proper story till I fell asleep. I don’t have the same kind of ‘night stories’ or imaginings now that I had as a child – I have command over that, whatever it is, and use it when I want to, and banish it otherwise. I do no ‘day dreaming’. I work with my subconscious, it doesn’t run away with me! It used to, of course, now I would not let it - it is in harness, and works all the better for it – and makes for a well-balanced personality. (I don’t believe I have answered your questions properly – you must ask again if not.) It’s so difficult to explain something unusual and so elusive.
You want to know about typing – I always type, for quickness, but I can of course write a story by hand just as well. But typing keeps up with my imagination better. The story evolves so very quickly when I write a book. I could probably dictate just as well, but I’d have to bother with a machine and records then and that would ‘break the spell’!
You can quote what you like from anything I have said or written if it’s of any help – but it would be nice if you could let me see a proof to make sure everything is absolutely accurate!
I was interested in your brief reports of students’ hypnagogic imagery. Have you read
Timeless Moment?
There is a great deal of interesting and thoughtful material there about all these things. Few people, I imagine, experience the ‘Timeless Moment’ (mystics do, of course, but that’srather different). I have only experienced one and have never forgotten it and never will. I wonder if you ever have? The man who wrote
Timeless Moment
experienced one, and described it extremely well. I’m not a mystic, I’m a very ordinary, cheerful sort of person, but I must say that things of this kind intrigue me very much.
You will be very sorry you ever wrote to me! I do wish you could throw some light on these strange things. I struggle to explain myself to myself – but when you are at one and the same time, creator and interpreter, using your unconscious and your conscious intermingled for hours, it is sometimes very muddling! Which is really which?
Enid Blyton to Peter McKellar, January 28th, 1955
I have recently tried a new medium of writing – that is, writing a play … [see page 165]. I thought you might like to know how an imagination, apparently harnessed only to the writing of books, can adapt itself, and pour itself out in quite a different medium. It took me nearly three weeks to write the play, but I could write another in a week now that I know how to harness my imagination to the new medium. I have just finished a book for Macmillans – the 8th in a popular series that has been translated into many languages: I began it on Monday, and finished it this afternoon (Friday). It is 60,000 words long and flowed like its title
(River of Adventure).
All the same I know quite well that if I had had to miss even a day in the writing of it I might have had to give it up. Once the river is dammed anywhere, it won’t flow again in that particular direction – which is why I must write a book at ‘full flow’. I wish you could explain to me why I have these limitations and their opposites! It puzzles me very much at times!
Peter McKellar to Enid Blyton, April 25th, 1957
At what I hope you will not regard as at long last – it is a very great pleasure to send you this copy of my book.
It is only a small return for the most valuable and interesting introspections with which you have provided me, and which are now recorded in print in the form you approved. I hope you will like it.
What pleases me is the way in which your creative processes, though atypical in many ways, nevertheless fit the general theory of original and creative thinking – which has for me been a great mystery.
I hope you will find the book, as a whole, of some interest. It takes a pretty broad sweep from thinking as represented by the students’ examination answer: the dream; the work of art; oddities like number forms, colour associations and hypnagogic imagery; grossly abnormal thinking; to the kinds of thinking we call theorising in science.
My impression is there is a lot of room for research in this field; too much that has so far been done has dealt merely with the history of the psychology of thinking; too little has attempted to make a new contribution, however tiny …
A start on the psychology of literary creativeness seems to me to be being made when we attempt to record, as accurately as human introspection permits, how individual creative thinkers have thought. Later I hope somebody will be able to generalise this know ledge into principles which apply to creative thinking as a whole …
Enid Blyton to Peter McKellar, May 13th, 1957
I have just finished reading your remarkably interesting book, and I really must write to congratulate you most warmly … You cover a very wide field, as you should, of course, but the reader never gets lost or bored – and your masterly little recapitulations at the end of each chapter are most satisfying – tying all loose ends up neatly for any untidy-minded reader. I do that for children very often!