Even if we have a reliable method and a process that seems to work there is still a lot of mystery in making art.
It’s a act of faith sometimes.
Somehow magic is involved and patience.
Sometimes a story calls you to come and find it, but you can’t quite locate where it’s hiding.
I think an artist or a writer or any kind of maker has to be a bit of dreamer with a willingness to search imagination the way a stargazer searches the endless sky.
In a way we are looking for distant galaxies of meaning and metaphor–trusting that somewhere, beyond the dark matter of a half-baked plot, there is a story that needs to be told or a painting that wants to be painted.
Astronomers know that beyond the glimmer of a of a billion years lies astonishment. And an artist must be like an astronomer and trust that beyond the dark matter of self doubt that story will appear.