Big Ideas Pay attention — writer Emily Maguire finds promiscuous curiosity and cultural receptivity in the creative process
Dec 8, 2025
Emily Maguire, an Australian novelist and writing teacher, dives into the essence of creativity, emphasizing the importance of cultural receptivity and promiscuous curiosity. She explores how unexpected encounters, like her first sight of Kentridge's work, ignite inspiration. Drawing from diverse influences, including Lin-Manuel Miranda and Frida Kahlo, she discusses the interplay of research and writing, and how connections shape creative output. Maguire highlights the vitality of paying attention and keeping a 'swipe file' of curiosities to enrich the creative process.
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Keep A Dedicated Notebook
- Keep a notebook to capture surprising ideas, images and overheard lines so they don't vanish.
- Write down curiosities immediately to build a lifelong resource for creative collisions.
Cross-Discipline Connections Spark Originality
- Creative breakthroughs come from associating unlikely ideas across disciplines.
- Deliberately import concepts from other arts to reshape your work's structure and meaning.
How Hamilton Began By Unexpected Comparison
- Lin-Manuel Miranda read Hamilton's biography and connected it to hip-hop, spawning the musical Hamilton.
- Miranda's wide cultural intake enabled a collision no specialist-only approach could produce.
