What is a writer’s greatest tool? No, it isn’t your PC, your laptop, your tablet or your favorite pen. It’s right between your ears, and yet as large as outer space itself. It is where all your ideas come from, the fount of all our symbols and images. Sigmund Freud called it the subconscious, and Carl Jung called it the unconscious. I put it on 2 different levels, and call it the sub/unconscious. We are only dimly aware of the subconscious. It comes through in our dreams, and some of the things we say when we are not thinking. The unconscious comes through literally when we are unconscious, under anesthesia or from an accidental blow to the head, or the hallucinations of a schizophrenic or under the influence of LSD or shrooms.
They are different for everyone, and are the sum total of everything you’ve ever experienced, through life experiences, books you’ve read (including the Bible. A frightening amount of images come from religious imagery) TV or movies you’ve seen. If you are religious and go to a church where an effective orator is preaching, many images can come from listening to that person’s sermons. All this is uploaded to our own personal mental Cloud, to use computer terminology, and can be accessed almost spontaneously.
In the days before I made friends with my own sub/unconscious, I used to try to scare myself with these images because I was then writing a novel about a woman who was being pursued by something so horrible that she could not even face it. This will be featured in a forthcoming novel. I wanted to see what was so horrible that one could not even face it. Then there is what Paul Atreides said in Dune to his grandmother the Reverend Mother Helen Gaius Mohiam, “Try looking into that place where you do not dare look. There you will find me, staring back at you.” I have tried looking into that place which is unlookable to “us, to women.”There I only see a reflection of my own face.
Then, sometime in my late forties, (I am now only a couple weeks short of turning 73) I made the conscious decision to make friends with my own sub/unconscious, and do you know what happened? The images I used to frighten myself with no longer had the power to frighten me. I could look upon the face of the Christians’ pet thought form Satan himself, and be unfazed. I imagined the bloodiest scenes I could, the better to describe them for my stories, and still I was unfazed. Now I wonder why this is. Have I become so callous and inured to these scenes that they have no effect on me? Has observing violence on television gotten me so unsensitized that I am immune to any emotional effect? I have a tendency, when things bog down in a story, to start a war or an argument among my characters.
There are three and a half months until the first Camp NaNoWriMo, and I already have an idea for it. Where did that idea come from? (See last Thursday’s blog about where story ideas come from.) Superficially it came from a show I was streaming on Netflix called The Pyramid Code, that that idea germ merged with some memories in my mind about Nikola Tesla, and before I knew it, I had a full blown story idea in my head. Certainly some images from my sub/unconscious must’ve gotten in there and clinched the deal, because soon I was scribbling the story idea in my notebook, which I keep in the bookcase headboard of my bed.
I urge you in the strongest possible terms to make friends with your sub/unconscious. Who knows what hidden treasures you can discover between the veils?
Rita
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