The Divide between Reason and Emotion

The divide between reason and emotion, and how it has impacted my creativity, that is, my writing.  I write speculative fiction. My SciFi tends to be more science fantasy than Science fiction because I’m always trying to skirt around certain laws of space and time that in today’s science are inescapable.  Here is where the divide between reason (scientific facts) and emotion (my trying to skirt about the laws of astrophysics) comes in. From being a regular viewer of the Science Channel’s How the Universe Works every Monday evening to collecting a year’s worth of Scientific American, I have garnered a little scientific knowledge, and you know what they say about a little knowledge.  How can I bend those laws without breaking them? One way I do it is to either set my story thousands of years in the future, or have a civilization so advanced that they’ve found ways around those seemingly unbreakable laws of physics.  There are some ways, for example, of breaking the universal speed law, i.e. the speed of light. There is a particle that goes faster than the speed of light. They discovered that in the CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland. Now to harness that and build an engine around it.   

Next there are the mechanics of writing (reason), and expressing my characters' emotions in any given scene.  I use the mechanics of putting one word in front of another, plus what I know about psychology (reason) to express my characters’ feelings.  Sometimes, and especially if I want to spice things up with some drama, I can get them into a real dust up. What fun! If you haven’t guessed by now, I am what used to be called a pantster, but which I prefer to be called a discovery writer, that is, I discover the story as I go along writing.  I’ve tried to outline, honestly I have, but it just makes me want to dig in and write the story.  

That’s another way in which the divide between reason (or as Spock would say, “logic”) and emotion has impacted my writing.  The Reason or Logic part of my mind says “Outline. Plot everything out. Know what your character is going to do before s/he does it.”  But the Emotion or passionate part of my mind says “Write it! Never mind the outline or those other silly sheets of paper! Tell the story!  Get it all down before you forget it!”  

What I know about brain science is that my emotions are chemical reactions, combined with 1.5 volts of electrical charge, come together to form an idea.  I am left-handed, so the halves of my brain are reversed, so that the logical, language-based, sequential side of my brain is the right side, while the creative holistic part of my brain is the left side, where most people’s logic centers are.    Truly is it said that we southpaws are the only ones in our right minds. The right side likes to get everything, all my thoughts organized in some logical rational way. The left side, highly influenced by my emotions, just wants to go for it.

What I’m waiting on now are the edits to Takuhi’s Nightmare and Takuhi’s Daydream so we can get the trilogy released soon.  Be looking for it on your favorite platform.  Whatever news I have on it you will be the next to know.  See you next week!  

Rita 

Is It Despair or Excitement Which Drives Me to Write in Today's World?

That’s an excellent question.  Those of you who have been following this blog know that I am a writer of speculative fiction.  This includes: Fantasy, Paranormal, Horror, Science Fiction and Science Fantasy. There may be some other subgenres which should be included, but I couldn’t remember them.  I write for the same reason I read; to escape. So I guess part of my answer to that question would have to be at least partially that I write out of despair.  

But instead of writing some dreary sort of claptrap like Franz Kafka’s in which the main character is turned into a disgusting pest that is almost impossible to be finally and fully rid of, I prefer to create a reality in which the bad guys are vanquished by a very idealized version of myself in a world (or space) where such things as getting rid of the bad guys are not only possible, but downright probable and plausible.  Here is where the excitement comes in. It is not a world of universe of black and white or even shades of gray, but a brightly colored landscape full of flowers and birds and other fantastical creatures. Having grown up at a time when most of the movies I saw were in blazing Technicolor, and the fact that when I dream, I dream in color. I’m always very conscious of the color something or someone is. The characters in my stories are often the brighter shades of the rainbow, going beyond black, brown brick red, golden, olive or pinkish-beige to blue, green, teal, cherry red, purple, or orange.  These are my alien characters, who have names I create with my Scrabble tiles. I once met a woman who really had blue skin. It was an after effect of a medication she had been given as a young girl to correct some physical condition she had had back then. She was Evangeline Walton, the author of four books I have in my library to this day, and we had a most interesting talk. I was working security to pay my way into a fantasy convention, and it was my job to keep her from being mobbed by her fans. She was charming and affable, and very easy to get along with. She was also very much an introvert, as I suppose most of us writers are, to a greater or lesser degree.  Writing fantasy or Scifi is by and large a solitary activity, and one must be comfortable staying by oneself for long periods of time. But the payoff is no one is teasing you, or tormenting you. No one is playing keep away with your property, as happened to many of us when we were young. We grew to value our own company, and the worlds and characters we created, because that made us gods and goddesses.  

So there is the despair and  the excitement.  The despair comes from realizing there are such cruel people in the world, many of whom either run the world or manipulate the world in order to subjugate and torment those whom they deem as lesser than they.  The excitement comes from realizing that the imagination is as big as the universe, and within it, one has divine powers to create, and like Shiva, to destroy whatever and whomever one Wills to.  

What's a Writer's Greatest Tool?

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

How I'm Coping with Shelter-in-Place and how it affects my Creativity

 I’m currently working on a book I found when I looked at a flash drive I hadn’t seen for awhile.  There’s at least a half dozen novels I haven’t done anything with since I won NaNoWriMo with them months ago.  I’m currently working on “And Love Will Steer the Stars.” I’ll resume working on it in May, after Camp Nano is finished until July, when we’ll have another Camp Nano.  March 31st I’ll have to reread what I’ve done on Intergalactic Encounter  so that the new chapters I’ll write next month will mesh with the first few chapters I’ve already written.  

I may write in a disease next month.  Have the politicians utterly stupid. As a writer, I’m usually pretty creative, and I don’t get out much, but I would like to eat at a restaurant once in a while.  I’m of the generation who cooks, not this lazy generation who orders in. Eating out should be reserved for a treat, not your fallback position. Of course, I’m retired, so I have the time to cook.  Even so, I favor dishes that feed an army, so that I only have to actually cook twice or 3 times a week. Cooking is a kind of alchemy, where you apply heat to “ordinary” ingredients, and come up with something magical.  I even apply the alchemical principle to luftwaffles. I take mix, water, oil, and add pumpkin pie spice and vanilla.. But I want enchiladas, which I can’t make.  

Creativity is somewhat of a compulsion for me.  I noticed about a year ago that the elastic on several pairs of my slacks was getting loose, so I set about  crocheting belt loops for them. It’s a simple pattern, really, chain 3 or 4 inches long, and half double crochet around the chain, working a double crochet in each corner to square the corners.It should take no more than a couple rounds, maybe three, to complete.  I like to make at least seven belt loops for each pair of pants, Sew to the pants a few stitches at each end of the belt loop. If you’re lucky enough to have pants with existing belt loops, you can use these to measure how long to make your crocheted ones.  

What I’m hoping for is enough extra energy to do a little coloring.  Maybe if Facebook gets boring enough, I can swap out my Facebook time for some coloring time.  But the time I spend on Facebook isn’t ALL looking at memes. Outside of funny cats, and stupid human tricks, most of it is chatting with my friebds and acquaintances.   The evening of the 31st of March I’ll be handwriting what I’ll be dictating to my Dragon the next morning. I hope I write a lot.

Well, that is all for now.  If you are in Patricia’s circle of authors, you might write a blog about how you are coping with the shelter-in-place, and how it is affecting your creativity.