One day I want to sit down with my favourite writers and give them lots of alcohol and be like “this is going to be a fucked up conversation, but let’s talk about thinking and writing.”
I desperately want to know what goes on in other people’s heads, especially when they’re writing. Is it mechanical? Organic? Are you plotting and scripting and drawing things up like an architect? Or are you having a blazing row with some asshole that is swearing he would never say the words you are trying to convince him are essential to a scene? Is it somewhere between? Are you a god, bending the world to your will? Or do you feel like you are the tool (ha!) with minimal input of your own? Do you deal with words and the characters follow? Or characters and the words follow?
I have so many questions about so many things. This isn’t even scratching the surface. I am dying to know.
That doesn’t seem like a fucked up conversation. A lot of the writers I hang out with talk about this stuff on a regular basis. Alcohol isn’t even necessary. Although I’m sure most of them wouldn’t complain.
This is all just part of the writing process, honestly, and understanding it and harnessing it is one of the skill sets a writer might want to cultivate. This stuff tends to be a hidden part of the process for a lot of us, so it can often be getting in our way without us even knowing about it. I bet you’d find it super useful to hit some of them up about this! And if they haven’t talked or thought about it before, you may end up doing them a favor too.
I know what you mean, but ultimately, the question I’m asking is “how do you think?” and that’s going to get rather abstract. How do you describe the actual process in your head of how you develop ideas, how they are even built in your head? Do you think in arrows, or overlapping circles, or layers or braided cords, or cables? Do your thoughts rise and fall, or weave together, or slide through each other like shuffling transparencies on a projector? How do you communicate with yourself? And how do you take that beautiful complicated messy explanation and put it into words that another beautiful complicated messy human being can understand, especially when they might not think in the same ways you do?
I need alcohol just to cope with talking about the possibility of talking about this. : P And again, this is only one facet of the conversation.
Oh, that’s interesting! I can see where the booze could come in useful.
Hm. Now I wonder how other people would visualize their subconscious. *peeks in, closes door again gently* Yikes.
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