Seeds of the novel

By Naguib Mahfouz

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Years ago ideas would come rushing to my mind and I would write them down in a small notebook for fear that I may forget. Many ideas appeared good enough to start a novel -- they were each a seed that may or may not grow into a tree. Some seeds germinated and developed, others did not. They failed to find the right water and soil, or else they simply weren't good seeds. You never know.

I had many ideas and thought that my only problem was time. I went on writing ideas down and waiting for the right time to work on them. Eventually I had collections of notebooks full of ideas. In one of these notebooks are 40 ideas for stories about Egyptian history, each capable of growing into a novel. But of these only three did. The rest remained ideas.

Artistic creation does not depend on ideas alone. There is no lack of them. What one needs is a moment of mental clarity during which words come racing in to form a new work of art, a work that may remain faithful to the original idea or digress into something not originally imagined.

Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy.