rearranging what’s already there is fine as a model for much of collage-based approaches, plus formulaic arts such as the blues, but I’m not convinced it works as an explanation for writing. Yes, there’s a level at which it can be described as the rearrangement of the same 26 letters (as Richard Bandler says, ‘What a rip off!’). And it’s possible to use methods such as cut-up to increase the collage effect. Or you can view the business of transforming life experiences and influences into script or prose as a form of collage. But that still doesn’t get what it’s like subjectively to tackle a piece of longform writing. Or even shortform sometimes; I’ve written poems that have (and here’s the linguistic clue…) ‘come from nowhere’ in part or whole, and that’s an experience that owes nothing to rearrangement, but is more akin to direct perception or even transmission. Same applies to some concepts for bigger pieces.

I’m passing it onto my-wife-the-artist, who has a blog on creativity, the practical side of being a fine artist in the modern world and other stuff - called Up All Night Again. You might find it interesting.
http://kirstyhall.co.uk/blog/

Fingers crossed that this post won’t be spam-tagged!

The problem, however, is that your forceful debater’s use of uninspiring negative language makes the artistic process sound dull and uninteresting - the opposite of how you actually experience the creative process, and this leads to the rejection of their argument. It’s like explaining sex as being the exchange of bodily fluids enabling procreation. Accurate but utterly failing to capture the emotion.

I’m no wordsmith, but to me artwork of any kind is the thrill of a unexpected and illuminating juxtaposition, whether it be between fields of colour in a painting, a mouthful of words twisted into a startling new phrase, the surprise harmony created by neighbouring notes in a song, or, in the words of the Surrealists’ darling Isidore Ducasse (aka le Comte de Lautréamont), “the chance encounter of an umbrella and a sewing machine on an operating table.”.

If, like your antagonist, you choose to phrase this in a negative manner, then you take the joy out of the creative process - in the same way that you can over-analyse a work of art until it’s been drained of all the passion that drew you to it in the first place. But to me, getting the things that are around you every day - whether they be words, notes, or images - to collaborate with each other in an inspiring new way is a wonderful thing. The art is in the juxtaposition, not the elements.