Have you ever gotten really, deeply "into" a chapter or a section of your writing? You effortlessly type out your work and it flows from your fingertips quickly and smoothly? Then eventually, you look over at the clock and if this were a movie, there'd be the sound of a record player needle scratching and the music ending abruptly. You realize that you have either been at the computer for four hours or your clock is a lying bastard. You stare at the clock. It stares back. And like every time, wins the staring contest. "You win this round, clock. Well played, sir. Well played." Your word count shows that you added something like 12,000 words to your document. Did you really write 10% of a novel in 4 hours? You feel like you just sat down and yet you've done DAYS of writing! If only every day could be like some sort of schizophrenic break, right? Maybe we shouldn't hope for that because those are the kind of prayers gods LOVE to answer with a resounding "YES!". Then later you become the subject of a "Fatal Attraction" style mini-series on Lifetime. I love writing like that but it is subtly disconcerting to have it actually happen. It is some of my best work but I also don't feel like I really *did* it! I remember it when I go back and read over what was written, but... Where did that writing come from? [headscratch] Some part of my brain switched off the rest of it? It is practically the definition of hypnotism. Utterly focused on only a single thing. It is the writing version of reading a really good book, I suppose? It's a little creepy.
Surprisingly, this happens to me quite a lot i.e. pretty much every time I sit down to write. It's weird, but as the old saying goes, "Time flies when you're having fun." I guess I'm just having fun.
Yes indeed. Experience plays a major part in writing. The unconscious mind has a role in refining the talent, as well as one's personality. So its said that whomever a writer describes in his novel is a reflection of a person whom the writer saw or known before. Weather the writer remembered him or not.
It happens when I drive long distances (every Friday), too. Suddenly I sort of wake up and there is a HUGE blank spot, in my head where I think "Did I already go through Moses Lake?" And I have no memory at all of operating my 26,000 pound truck, through that area. Was I letting my spinal cord take the wheel?
I figure all the characters in my book are "shades of me". Like the actors in my dreams. They are all versions of me.
I believe it does. Its the energy that's behind everything, even the thought; it has its own energy, and its specific time to flow.
I used to do that a lot. I drove long haul, and I'd get out on one of those long empty stretches with a good audiobook playing and the next thing I know I've gone 300 miles and hardly remember it. When it was time for my husband to drive he'd come out of the sleeper and ask if I saw anything interesting and I'd be thinking, "Well, Odd Thomas saved Pico Mundo again, but other than that, no, not really."
For me, the realization has usually been that my wife has stopped calling down and asking when I was coming to bed. 12,000 words in one sitting? Never managed that. I think the most for me was about half that.
I loved the first Odd Thomas book! I think it was the last book my dad read before Parkinson's took him too far. Elvis, crying. But happy. It is so disconcerting to think back carefully and simply draw a blank about something I JUST DID! I even try to picture the town, hoping it will spur a memory or two. A stretch of highway I know so well, I can navigate the potholes before I can even see them. And there's not a single memory. Did I slow down for the speed limit change? I don't remember! Was there construction? I just don't know! My truck has a super modern tape player. I don't even know if it works When I've driven to Colorado, I get Harry Potter books. 16 hour drive and 16 hours of book. Last time, when I got back I had not quite finished the last book, so I sat in the driveway and finished listening to it. After 16 1/2 hours on the road THAT is good writing!!!!!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" in one sitting, I heard. And he never really attributed it to himself. He said he didn't really know where it came from. The rest of his life's works were nothing like it. What part of his brain grabbed the rest by its proverbial esophagus and kept it from interfering while the "special part" did the writing? And that was some DARK stuff. How many of us are in there?
