On Writing

I just opened up my senior paper for the first time in years. Something about Martin Eden has been pulsing through my veins lately. Hopefully not the tragic part. Though perhaps it's all interconnected; most things seem to be.

On Friday, the honors program hosted author K. D. Wentworth. She writes science fiction, and I haven't read her, but someone I respect greatly in the literary field says her characterization of "the alien" is impressive, so I imagine she's someone worth trying out. (She has a book online if you're curious.)

One of the most interesting things she discussed was the connection between the imagination and the subconscious. In her opinion, the writer has to deal with both sides of the brain. The left side is the inner editor, the inner critic. It is the part of you that tells you every word you have written is absolute garbage. And the right side is the imagination, the subconscious. It is the part that is only excited about its own ideas and brings them to mind at random times, whether you're ready for them or not.

"I'm closer to my subconscious in the morning than I am at any other time of the day," she told us. Because her conscious is not fully awake, the other side can actually break through. (I can relate; I'm so anti-morning.)

"Writer's block," she said, "is really an inability to connect with your subconscious."

And also, "If you find yourself in your bedroom rearranging your socks, then you know that the editor has won." I smile at this because I have a shiny kitchen sink right now for very similar reasons.

But one of the most important things to her about writing was the necessity of making it habitual. Sitting down daily for a period of time, just to listen to the voice within her. And to write it out. Even 1 page a day led to 365 pages written in a year, she calculated, and there is a lot that you can do with 365 pages.

And that is what made me think of Martin Eden and Jack London himself--because that was his philosophy and Martin's as well. Just to do it. As a disipline. To make yourself write, because chances were, something would come of it if you just did it, but if you never wrote anything, nothing would ever come of it.

It didn't work out so well for Martin, of course. At least, not in the end, when he killed himself. (Because he was a capitalist, if you ask Jack, though I'm not convinced that was the entire issue.) Sorry if I ruined the end of a book you'll never read....

There are days when I remember what it was like to sit for hours at the computer and compose something. Sometimes it was good; sometimes it was crap; but the process was beautiful. Therapeutic. Cathartic. Sometimes, in a very real way, it was the working out of my faith. Or the evidence of a journey back.

Sometimes I wonder if my inability to write creatively now, whether due to writer's block or lack of intention to set aside time to just do it, is just as much an inability to connect with God as it is an inability to connect with my subconscious imagination.

After all, at least for me, I hear God most clearly when I'm writing.

I wonder what I'm afraid of.