What David Lynch's creative vision can give to writers

For David Lynch, creativity was a man with a jigsaw in another room. The man would post a jigsaw piece through a letterbox in the wall. The job of the artist was to take that jigsaw piece. To notice what was beautiful; what was interesting.

The job wasn’t knowing what it was going to look like when the jigsaw was complete. It was working with the piece you had, then the next; trusting, knowing, that another jigsaw piece would be coming along if you worked from a place of curiosity.

Here are five gifts from David Lynch that changed my life and will continue to change my life, every day, for as long as I have one:

• Take the jigsaw piece

It might be beautiful. It might be strange. It might be sinister. But whatever it is, it’s a piece of something bigger. And it’s ours. We might have no idea how it connects, or what to. So instead of ‘But I don’t know what it’s going to look like finished’ we can put that energy into imagining, enjoying, exploring. That’s the permission he gave himself and that’s the permission we can commit to giving ourselves.

• Go where the fish are

David Lynch talks (I cannot touch past tense here) about ideas being fish. There are bigger, more beautiful ones in the deepest waters, but there are smaller ones too. It’s not about catching a good or bad idea. It’s all about getting into the habit of being there to catch them. Catching the Big Fish is one of my top five guides to the creative mindset and how to liberate, exercise and maintain it.

• Make Room to Dream

Room to Dream is so much more than the title of Lynch’s 2018 autobiography written with Kristine McKenna.  It is method, manifesto and subject matter. It’s the heart of everything, from how he worked to what his work spoke about. No simple, definitive answers. No answers at all. An appreciation of the mystery, which Lynch particularly made room for through Transcendental Meditation. Room to Dream. Into the Night. Now it’s Dark. We can sit in the desert wondering why we’re not catching fish, or we can take ourselves where the fish are. It might mean walking. It might mean shutting the door. It might mean saying no to being available at certain times. But as with any Writers’ Gym habit, starting is the hard bit. Acknowledging it’s a healthy idea, to make space instead of waiting for time. That gets you thinking with curiosity – ‘how do I make this happen?’ instead of ‘what does it say about me?’ or ‘what if it goes wrong?’ – instead of channelling energy into defensiveness against the possibility of going deeper. Possibility becomes a friend. It becomes a corner it’s a privilege to turn.

• Fix your hearts or…

… the ‘or’ isn’t always a literal death. But death is the literary and literal opposite of growth; of change. In its least cryptic outing, ‘Fix your hearts or die’ was what Lynch’s Twin Peaks Gordon Cole told the bullying, unaccepting colleagues of Denise, the police officer who had transitioned (David Duchovny). This scene is a bullshit-free reminder it’s up to us to be about authenticity in ourselves – and even more to be about authenticity for others. Even when – and especially when – we don’t understand it. It’s not for us to know how one jigsaw piece fits into the whole picture in our own work, let alone anyone else’s world. It’s not for us to know how things connect. So supporting others who dare to explore their own authenticity is a damn fine place to start.

•    Create your world

With a new writing group, or new client, I’ll occasionally see someone respond to a writing prompt (either one I’ve provided, or one that’s swum past them in their wider world) by telling me why the prompt itself was no good. My reply, if they seem to invite one, is to write through the not-writing. To dream through the boredom. To ‘what if’ around the next corner. You don’t need to have experienced the David Lynch Foundation’s work with TM, self-esteem and creativity to know the dangers of how easy it is to stay busy, to have no time to see what’s in the deeper waters, or to dismiss the potential of going there at all. But any dive, literal or otherwise, is about seeing what’s there when we arrive and responding authentically, as only the strange, beautiful, weird individual each one of us is, ever could.

In love and gratitude. David Lynch, 1946-2025.

Today, Monday 20 January, would have been David Lynch’s 79th birthday. His children invite fans worldwide to join in a 10-minute mediation at 12 noon EST (8pm UK). Read about it here or visit the David Lynch Foundation for more.

Taken from a longer piece at drrachelknightley.substack.com

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