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It has been said that highly creative individuals, composers, inventors, musicians, poets, painters, and writers use intuition, knowingly or not. For example, Robert Louis Stevenson dreamed about and then brought forth his book Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Writers who've taken a conscious leap of faith and ventured into the unknown have experienced surprising results. Susan Barnes wrote three novels that remained unpublished, then decided to listen with her heart instead of her head. A publisher snapped up Kelly Karate Encounters the Moon Princess before Susan had even finished the first draft.

Ms. Barnes, who now teaches intuitive writing, said what made the difference was the way she wrote. She let go of rigid, forced writing patterns and went with the creative flow, jotting down whatever entered her mind.

Intuitive writers find that sentences, paragraphs, or even chapters leap out at them. They set out to write a character and find their protagonist taking on an entirely different personality; or endings come to them before beginnings . . . or they are compelled to write bits and pieces of a story, then puzzle them together later.

Jane Yolen, award winning author of children's books, fantasy, and science fiction, and a teacher of writing and literature, put it this way, "I have learned to trust those intuitive moments when stories seem to leak from my fingertips."(Ref: Jane Yolen's website journal, For Writers.)

William Whitecloud, author of The Magician's Way, said, "The question I have often asked myself is, where do these words come from? Not the rational mind, obviously." He found the more he let go of what he thought he knew, the more he was taken over by an inner wisdom that began elevating him to higher and higher levels of creative ability.

The ancient Greeks personified inspirations that arose from intuition. Called the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, (memory) the Greeks believed these Muses prompted those they visited to remember what they had forgotten.

"All great men are gifted with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know," said Nobel Prize Laureate Alexis Carrel. "Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality."

If we can learn to summon our own "extrasensory perception of reality," our writing may become larger than life and an inspiration to those who follow.

This article first appeared at The Sword Review

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