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Subconscious writing
Apr. 5th, 2011 07:34 pmOkay, this weather is crazy. It's been horribly dark and gloomy all day, with pouring rain. Now that it's quarter after seven, the sun has come out, the sky is blue, and the whole house is illuminated. DH just called to apologize for being late but he has three classes to prepare and three finals to write for the next couple days. I didn't even realize it was that late. I mean, it's lighter than it was at noon!
So the elementary school had this cool science day today. Usually when you go to the school science night, it's making silly putty with borax or doing baking soda volcanoes. Which is cool the first time you see it, but not so much the sixth time. This one was tons better--it was a lot like the hands-on children's museum in Charleston, SC that we liked to go to. There was a room for making giant bubbles, a place where you could race little cars on balloon power, there were fossils to study and real hydraulic cranes to operate (with giant syringes), there were marble runs and a bunch of other things. It was cool. Hard to keep track of five kids in there, but still, worth going to.
What else? I just read A True and Faithful Narrative, by Katherine Sturtevant, which I rather enjoyed. It's rare to find a historical novel that is free from anachronistic 21st century notions. It was still accessible to modern readers, but I didn't feel like the author was trying to force her ideas on the reader through the story. Rather refreshing. We also finished Little Town on the Prairie (the girls and I) and are almost done with the last Narnia book. Ooh--Voyage of the Dawn Treader comes out on DVD this week! I'm looking forward to seeing it again.
I'm trying to bury myself in a new book, and I'm again surprised at how important the subconscious is in writing. I've never been able to just fill out a form about my characters--you know, what their favorite color is, what music they like, what's in their pockets--because that doesn't really tell me anything about them. It doesn't require me to dig very deep, and it feels like I'm making up something unreal rather than revealing something that IS real. I need to figure out what's in their heads, what drives them, what their secret dreams are and why they act the way they do. And those sorts of things come clear to me when I write them into a situation--not when I make a list or an outline. That's when my subconscious, which has been composting for quite a while now, will turn up strange things that are strangely right for the story. Like the time when suddenly I realized I had a 13YO boy whose dream was to sing opera. I had no idea until I typed those very words. But he does want to sing opera! I find a lot of my characters are new and feel wrong-footed because of this, or because of socioeconomic differences. They are often either in or from very different backgrounds than Plain Vanilla Caucasian America. Not surprising as I've moved so many times and been the different one so often. But other things surprise me because they aren't my experience--or at least, they aren't my side of the experience--and I wonder at how strongly my characters feel these things. I think it must be partly because of watching my kids interact, and trying to understand them. Are you ever surprised at what surfaces that you didn't realize you were thinking about?
So the elementary school had this cool science day today. Usually when you go to the school science night, it's making silly putty with borax or doing baking soda volcanoes. Which is cool the first time you see it, but not so much the sixth time. This one was tons better--it was a lot like the hands-on children's museum in Charleston, SC that we liked to go to. There was a room for making giant bubbles, a place where you could race little cars on balloon power, there were fossils to study and real hydraulic cranes to operate (with giant syringes), there were marble runs and a bunch of other things. It was cool. Hard to keep track of five kids in there, but still, worth going to.
What else? I just read A True and Faithful Narrative, by Katherine Sturtevant, which I rather enjoyed. It's rare to find a historical novel that is free from anachronistic 21st century notions. It was still accessible to modern readers, but I didn't feel like the author was trying to force her ideas on the reader through the story. Rather refreshing. We also finished Little Town on the Prairie (the girls and I) and are almost done with the last Narnia book. Ooh--Voyage of the Dawn Treader comes out on DVD this week! I'm looking forward to seeing it again.
I'm trying to bury myself in a new book, and I'm again surprised at how important the subconscious is in writing. I've never been able to just fill out a form about my characters--you know, what their favorite color is, what music they like, what's in their pockets--because that doesn't really tell me anything about them. It doesn't require me to dig very deep, and it feels like I'm making up something unreal rather than revealing something that IS real. I need to figure out what's in their heads, what drives them, what their secret dreams are and why they act the way they do. And those sorts of things come clear to me when I write them into a situation--not when I make a list or an outline. That's when my subconscious, which has been composting for quite a while now, will turn up strange things that are strangely right for the story. Like the time when suddenly I realized I had a 13YO boy whose dream was to sing opera. I had no idea until I typed those very words. But he does want to sing opera! I find a lot of my characters are new and feel wrong-footed because of this, or because of socioeconomic differences. They are often either in or from very different backgrounds than Plain Vanilla Caucasian America. Not surprising as I've moved so many times and been the different one so often. But other things surprise me because they aren't my experience--or at least, they aren't my side of the experience--and I wonder at how strongly my characters feel these things. I think it must be partly because of watching my kids interact, and trying to understand them. Are you ever surprised at what surfaces that you didn't realize you were thinking about?
