This article explores the reported use of conceptual combination in Stephen R. Donaldson's development of the idea for his award-winning fantasy series, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Donaldson's (1991) own account is used to illustrate the general principles of a creative cognition approach to understanding creativity as well as the more specific role of the basic process of conceptual combination. The links between Donaldson's and others' anecdotal accounts of creativity

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... laboratory investigations are assessed. The article concludes with an argument for a "convergence" approach in which information from anecdotal accounts and laboratory studies is combined to provide a more complete picture of creative functioning than either approach alone can offer. As soon as those two ideas came together, my brain took fire. -Stephen R. Donaldson (1991, p. 223) 350 April 2001 • American Psychologist