In the latest installment (published just today) of the Guardian and Observer series of articles about “How to write fiction,” novelist Meg Rosoff offers some brilliant and exhilarating advice about finding your writer’s voice by learning to negotiate the relationship between your conscious and unconscious minds. (Or actually, she uses the word “subconscious,” which, while it carries a slightly different denotation and connotation, is close enough.) And she ties this directly to the question of not only writing authentically, but of knowing and living your life’s deep meaning. This is a subject and a discipline that, as you know, sits at the center of what we’re about here at Demon Muse, and also in Demonic Creativity.
Observe:
Self-knowledge is essential not only to writing, but to doing almost anything really well. It allows you to work through from a deep place — from the deep, dark corners of your subconscious mind. This connection of subconscious to conscious mind is what gives a writer’s voice resonance. Read a great writer and you’ll feel the resonance – it’s the added dimension of power that can’t quite be explained by mere talent. An ability with words is nice, but it’s not a voice.
Connecting with your subconscious mind is not easy. It requires confronting difficult facts — about yourself and about the world…Of course the biggest, darkest question of all is death. Not an easy question to meet head-on. Some people naturally confront death. Some seem incapable of not confronting it. Woody Allen says that when he was a small child he lay in bed, terrified, contemplating eternal nothingness. So, apparently, did William Golding. Many people, however, live their lives in evasion of the central fact of existence. Of course it is perfectly possible to be a writer without facing death face-on, without years of psychoanalysis, and without a tendency towards depression. But the resonant, powerful, exciting voice that grips you in its thrall is likely to be a voice with a good deal of hard-won wisdom about humanity.
…Now think, for a minute, of your subconscious mind as the horse and your conscious mind as the rider. The goal is a combination of strength, suppleness and softness. If the rider (conscious mind) is too strong, too stiff or unsympathetic, the horse becomes unresponsive and difficult to control, or resistant and dull. The object of dressage is to create an open, graceful exchange of understanding and energy between horse and rider.
…A book written with an exchange of energy between the conscious and subconscious mind will feel exciting and fluid in the way that a perfectly planned and pre-plotted book never will. Writing (like riding, or singing, or playing a musical instrument, or painting or playing cricket or thinking about the universe) requires the deep psychological resonance of the subconscious mind.
She follows this up with some useful advice about — surprise — taking up the practice of writing in the early morning, and writing with abandon, in order to feel your way into that living relationship between the two minds. It’s a great article, and I recommend it highly.
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#1 by Jeff Faria on December 4, 2011 - 3:21 pm
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This goes to the core of what I’ve been after. I’m not kidding. I wrote about this subject here and referenced this post.
Most writers attempt to write consciously, or attempt to access the subconscious by incapacitating what they see as a conscious interference or barrier (via drugs, alcohol, whatever). To borrow Ms. Rosoff’s analogy above, this is like a disabled rider on the horse.
BOTH rider and horse must be up to the task for the best result, but most creatives can’t quite manage that. Why? Much has to do with our struggle with ego, which Ms. Rosoff describes as ‘confronting difficult fact’.
Glad I found this blog. Bookmarked.
#2 by Matt Cardin on December 5, 2011 - 11:17 am
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I’m glad you found the blog too, Jeff, and I appreciate your weighing in. I also appreciate your blog post, which I just read and found quite absorbing. Best of luck with The Patriots of Mars, and also with your ongoing creative pursuits.