It’s been very hard to keep my focus and my momentum due to circumstances you all know, but I think I am over the hump and still making sense. I’ll of course do a running rewrite to be sure everything makes the sense I think it does, but I think I am on track.<\/p>\n
I wish there were more hours in the day. I take breaks, and appear not to be writing, but the hindbrain is working, and when next I key onto the manuscript, the resolution to what stopped me will be there: it’s amazing how much complex work the lower brain\u00a0can do without notifying the forebrain that it’s happening. Connections happen; things that don’t make sense suddenly make sense…<\/p>\n
The best way I can explain it is something everybody does experience: when you dream, objects turn up when you need them, or they haven’t been there, but suddenly the dream revises itself and it’s always been true, making things make sense for the moment. The brain keeps trying to assemble data, even when it’s not receiving input: it arranges things together and, out of the fund of unused bits and bobs of ideas, or perceived needs or relationships between things, assembles them into a patchwork order that makes increasing sense, within the context of the dream.<\/p>\n
Writing is dreaming awake. You don’t know how you’re going to get out of\u00a0the mess\u00a0you’ve created, but all of a sudden the idea is there, and if you hammer it too hard with your intellectual function, you’re going to forget something or take a wrong fork in the road and get stuck. Let dream-state solve it, and it will come up with pieces that surprise and please you. This is why banniks exist in showers, to give you inspirations; this is why when you really, really get stuck, you lie down to take a nap, your head hits the pillow, and boink! you’re wide awake instantly and in possession of the answer you were after.<\/p>\n
I worry about today’s generation, with its flood of music, noise, input, chatter, chatter, chatter, not to mention (ugh!) structured play activity. Hindbrain work functions best in reasonable\u00a0quiet and non-structure, and is even controllable. We call it daydreaming, when you dive into hindbrain activity and are somewhere else for a while. Ideas happen, crosslinks between parts of the brain that haven’t said hello to each other in hours. I don’t think it’s meditation. Meditation is too much like work. This is unadulterated walking barefoot through the meadows of the mind and waiting for encounters.<\/p>\n
It’s a peaceful\u00a0place to go (Bren would disagree at the moment) and you are absolute king or queen of the universe while you’re there. It’s where the ego lives—mine occupies a waterfall pool at the center of it all, and is always exploring things. And ideas keep floating up out of that depth, so I never worry about being stuck: worry makes you sink, and you’ll just get frustrated. Think buoyant thoughts, listen to the water, and wait. Something will come bobbing up—but you may have to chase it before you get a good look at it. And it may mutate four and five times while you’re chasing it, but it will only get more useful in the process. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
Many people think writers are a little crazy. Yep, but it’s a good crazy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s been very hard to keep my focus and my momentum due to circumstances you all know, but I think I am over the hump and still making sense. I’ll of course do a running rewrite to be sure everything makes the sense I think it does, but I think I am on track. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":751,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-fiction_writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/751"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cherryh.com\/WaveWithoutAShore\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}