Oh, my. I never thought of myself as doing "unrestrained creativity". I was a technical writer before retiring and becoming a creative writer. It is possible to do both. As a technical writer, I was handed problems to unravel and document. Everything had to be precise and concise. As a writer of short fiction, I go for a walk and look at the houses and open my imagination to making up what is going on inside based on the look of the house and the garden. In the times before the pandemic, I sat in coffee shops and listened intently to the conversations going on around me and opened my imagination to the possibilities that led to a conversation and the possibilities that followed another conversation. Anytime I have to spend any time in a line, I pick someone in front of me and open my imagination to their story - who are they? what is their job? where do they live? who do they love? I see ideas in everyone, every place, and even every thing - that package someone is mailing at the post office: what is in it? where is it going? why? I guess, as I re-read this, it is unrestrained creativity. But ideas come from very solid people and very solid things that are firmly planted in real neighborhoods and coffee shops and lines and post offices and every place any place in the world.
