Thursday, September 2, 2010
Running on Instinct
I’m not a writer who analyzes or spends much time wondering how I write what I write. (I’ve explored a bit of the why, but that is more a philosophical question and has little practical application. But it’s loads of fun!)
(I think my definition of fun differs than most, but…well…it’s fun for me.)
When it comes to practical writing, I’m totally at sea. The concept of involving a formula of any sort to what I do gives me the shivers. I figure I’ll never be much help to those looking for advice on how to write. But I’ll be a good cheerleader!
I’ve taken classes and online workshops and gone to panels and taken notes and found it all really, really, really interesting. But the thought of how one deliberately examines a MS and inserts more suspense/drama/conflict/tension…gives me hives.
I’m superstitious. I admit it. I never thought I was, but the more I look at why I shy away from even sliding a sideways glance at all of these techniques to enhance the MS…the more aware I am that I honestly don’t want to know.
So, I had to examine the why I don’t want to know.
And instinct dove right to the front of the pack of my gibbering answers. Instinct. Hmmm. Well, OK. I can see that. I write by instinct. And I think I’m too close to my writing to find the space necessary to analyze and insert techniques that others find useful. It could be the fear of an ugly baby thing… Don’t want to risk the perspective of seeing how ugly the kid really is.
Or…I don’t want to take the time because…well, there are sabertooths out there waiting to pounce and make a meal out of me. Instinct says to just keep going. Just kept writing, just push through…out of that open savannah where danger lurks. Too easy to stop and lose my focus point, the landmark I’m heading for. Which leads to the rocks, to safety, to the oasis where water waits.
I run a lot on instinct. Which means I lose out on a lot of the sweeter shortcuts modern life offers. I think a lot of those writing techniques would really be useful for me. But I can’t. I have to get through to the other side… Once there, I can splash in the oasis with some of them and maybe find a way to use them. Maybe.
But honestly? Not very much.
Another thing…I don’t want to question the magic. I’m not a scientist. (Q, I hope you’ll forgive me this sentiment. I love science, really.) But science is apt to destroy the apple while trying to understand it. Science will uncover all the secrets of the magician and reveal to all that the rabbit was never really in the hat.
I like the magic of it. I don’t want to know how things are done. I mean, to a certain point, I want to know, but not the point of not believing in magic anymore. I don’t want to strip away the magic.
I do believe at the heart of science lies a hell of a lot of magic and miracles and things so beyond our understanding that it all might as well be magic. And maybe it is! ;-)
Sigh. Lovely sigh.
I’m a believer. At the heart of it all, I’m a believer. I believe there are days when things are easy. Even the writing. I know I fly in the face of several of the pirates with this sentiment, but there are times…even when I can feel the sabertooth breathing on my neck, that it’s easy to keep ahead of it. Fate spills my way, sabertooth stumbles, falls in a crevice I easily leapt over and for a short period, the writing spills from me like a steady rain. And it’s easy.
And I dance in that rain and just relish these times.
So, I’m standing tall today. Because instinct works for me. I trust my primal brain. And I trust the magic to keep me entranced. And that rain felt good this week, when the scene I’ve been stewing about poured down on me and it was good.
It may be an ugly baby, but it will grow up to be a handsome man…
Friday’s topic… Instinct verses training? Magic verses science? Easy verses hard? Take your pick!
(I think my definition of fun differs than most, but…well…it’s fun for me.)
When it comes to practical writing, I’m totally at sea. The concept of involving a formula of any sort to what I do gives me the shivers. I figure I’ll never be much help to those looking for advice on how to write. But I’ll be a good cheerleader!
I’ve taken classes and online workshops and gone to panels and taken notes and found it all really, really, really interesting. But the thought of how one deliberately examines a MS and inserts more suspense/drama/conflict/tension…gives me hives.
I’m superstitious. I admit it. I never thought I was, but the more I look at why I shy away from even sliding a sideways glance at all of these techniques to enhance the MS…the more aware I am that I honestly don’t want to know.
So, I had to examine the why I don’t want to know.
And instinct dove right to the front of the pack of my gibbering answers. Instinct. Hmmm. Well, OK. I can see that. I write by instinct. And I think I’m too close to my writing to find the space necessary to analyze and insert techniques that others find useful. It could be the fear of an ugly baby thing… Don’t want to risk the perspective of seeing how ugly the kid really is.
Or…I don’t want to take the time because…well, there are sabertooths out there waiting to pounce and make a meal out of me. Instinct says to just keep going. Just kept writing, just push through…out of that open savannah where danger lurks. Too easy to stop and lose my focus point, the landmark I’m heading for. Which leads to the rocks, to safety, to the oasis where water waits.
I run a lot on instinct. Which means I lose out on a lot of the sweeter shortcuts modern life offers. I think a lot of those writing techniques would really be useful for me. But I can’t. I have to get through to the other side… Once there, I can splash in the oasis with some of them and maybe find a way to use them. Maybe.
But honestly? Not very much.
Another thing…I don’t want to question the magic. I’m not a scientist. (Q, I hope you’ll forgive me this sentiment. I love science, really.) But science is apt to destroy the apple while trying to understand it. Science will uncover all the secrets of the magician and reveal to all that the rabbit was never really in the hat.
I like the magic of it. I don’t want to know how things are done. I mean, to a certain point, I want to know, but not the point of not believing in magic anymore. I don’t want to strip away the magic.
I do believe at the heart of science lies a hell of a lot of magic and miracles and things so beyond our understanding that it all might as well be magic. And maybe it is! ;-)
Sigh. Lovely sigh.
I’m a believer. At the heart of it all, I’m a believer. I believe there are days when things are easy. Even the writing. I know I fly in the face of several of the pirates with this sentiment, but there are times…even when I can feel the sabertooth breathing on my neck, that it’s easy to keep ahead of it. Fate spills my way, sabertooth stumbles, falls in a crevice I easily leapt over and for a short period, the writing spills from me like a steady rain. And it’s easy.
And I dance in that rain and just relish these times.
So, I’m standing tall today. Because instinct works for me. I trust my primal brain. And I trust the magic to keep me entranced. And that rain felt good this week, when the scene I’ve been stewing about poured down on me and it was good.
It may be an ugly baby, but it will grow up to be a handsome man…
Friday’s topic… Instinct verses training? Magic verses science? Easy verses hard? Take your pick!
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29 comments:
I think that you just have to use what works best for you! 8)
Ideally writing should be a mixture of science, magic and intuition, the relative proportions depending on the individual writer.
There are materialist scientists who believe that atomic particles and field quanta are all there is, so that it must be possible to explain everything in terms of these building blocks.
But there are others, I wouldn't necessarily call them dualists, who recognize that mind phenomena, like beauty, spirit, and dare I say, intuition, are not so easily related to atoms and fields.
Science, like writing, is very addictive. It sometimes feels like an infinite series in that explaining some phenomena generally opens up new questions so that the process appears to have no end.
Quantum theory currently offers the deepest scientific understanding of the world, but this theory involves an 'observer' who by looking at a quantum system, forces it to 'collapse' into a state that makes sense to our senses. The observer is not an integral part of the theory though, and this leads to all sorts of speculation about mental phenomena.
Trying to understand the human mind is a bit like asking an 'intelligent' computer to explain intelligence. One wonders if it is possible!
Having said that though, science has some big guns like 'broken symmetry' and 'bootstrapping' which may allow a way forward.
Intuitively (*grin*) I think that we will eventually understand pretty well everything, though I won't be around to see it, and we will then 'know the mind of God' to quote Hawking.
When we achieve that ultimate understanding, the magic, magnificence and sheer wonder of the creation will be awe inspiring. But even then there will be one more question, from the big guy himself:
" OK buddy, if you're so clever, who created me?"
Inspiring blog Chance :D
Chance, I am a girl who runs on intuition. When I was a lawyer, it was how I operated, and it was not "the norm", because the law prizes "logic" over anything else.
I also understand not wanting to question how it all works, especially when it's working just fine. As I've said, writing is 85% magic and 15% voodoo for me most of the time.
The trouble comes when an agent, or at some point hopefully an editor, says something like, "This scene needs more tension" or "You need to raise the stakes". Then I need to know HOW to do that. Especially if they have specific expectations of what should occur when they make those suggestions.
I think I've absorbed a lot about writing through my years of reading, so I can rely on instinct and intuition as I'm drafting. And now that I've learned a lot about other techniques, those have moved to the realm of instinct, showing up automatically now when I write. They can try to take over, which is the annoying part. But I like having them as part of the bag of magic tricks. :)
Nice post!
The concept of involving a formula of any sort to what I do gives me the shivers.
In a way, that "formula" seems like magic to me or the components to a magic trick. When something works (the cumulative effect of a good scene that invokes an emotional response), it's tempting to break it apart and see what components made it work as a whole. I do wonder "how'd they do that?"
The funny thing is, I don't think if you asked "how did you do that?" of a writer they could really break it down. It didn't happen that way. If anything, they would get slightly uncomfortable because it did seem like magic in the creation.
I think you're right not to question it to much. That's for others to do and we, as the writer, have to somehow act like it's a secret we know but aren't telling. :)
What a fun blog. I very much like Q's take on the topic. Even my science-repelling brain understood all that. Well, most of it.
I'm fortunate enough to meet up with the esteemed Dee S. Knight once a month or so for writing talk and she is one who says the characters never talk to her. In fact, she seems skeptical of the whole idea. Or maybe she just looks at me funny for other reasons. :)
My characters don't necessarily talk directly to me, but they do talk and show me things and tell me things in a round-about way. To me, that is magical and I embrace the magic.
One of the reasons I've never been good at math is because I have no desire to know how things work. For writing, I've studied techniques on how to make my stories read better, but the stories themselves are as magical as any fleeting unicorn riding a cloud of cotton candy.
Do you mean "versus" rather than poetry stanzas? Though if you want some poetry stanzas, I can work on it. It IS Friday.
I think you need instinct, yes, very much so, because too often writers don't trust their own voice over other writers' opinions, and if there is one thing that is true, it's that no writer really thinks they know what they're doing. If they say they do, they're lying. I think writers are at least as superstitious as baseball players. So trusting your instincts is definitely the first thing.
But I don't think this is an either-or cause. I think you need both instinct and knowledge. I think knowledge of how to do stuff better DOES make our writing better and our stories stronger.
I'm picking middle ground gray. I think all these are both.
I’m fortunate enough to meet up with the esteemed Dee S. Knight once a month or so for writing talk and she is one who says the characters never talk to her. In fact, she seems skeptical of the whole idea.
I remember when you used to think we were weird for saying our characters were chatty. And I remember you saying, "My characters will not be running the show. I am the writer."
Why do the letters look smaller today? Am I THAT tired?
Sheesh.
I think there's a difference between saying they write the story and they talk to me. They mostly talk when I need to know something. And more often than not, they hold out longer than is good for either of us.
But I fully admit, when I first sat down and said, "I'm going to write something" I didn't understand the "characters talking" thing. I was a newby. Inexperienced. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Dee cannot claim newby status. LOL!
Did Earl keep you up late last night, Terri? :)
I don't see this as an either/or situation (intuition vs. analyzing). More like a sequential thing -- like not trying to hit the accelerator and the brake at the same time while driving. LOL
No, Earl was a dud. Around these parts, anyway. He weakened then headed further out to sea. Which, sadly, is a sentence that could apply to other parts of my life.
Three hours traipsing (sp?) around a middle school after a very stressful day at work kicked my ass. LOL!
I think Earl is going to just raise our humidity levels to "Unbearable" or "Just Slightly Less Than Deadly". LOL
Gotta run out for a few -- be back later!
Q - I knew you'd have an elegant way to explain it! I whirl with my arms spread blubbering about how pretty everything is and you stand still and it all comes to you...
Yes, I do think if/when science figures it all out, the divine creative force will be standing there, smiling.
It's like the science is elegant, it's the process that can sometimes be clumsy. But we're young and anxious and we don't know, so we're like children pulling petals off of the rose; in our haste to understand, we destroy the rose.
Ah, Donna, I'm hoping as agents and editors speak to me of what is missing or what they need, I can rely on the osmosis factor. That I will have absorbed enough from the panels, classes and discussions to know what they want. How I do it?
More than likely that will be a purely instinctual stab in the dark for me.
Perhaps, at some point, I'll just do it enough to be able to articulate what I'm doing and help others...not to mention myself.
Though I'm more of the school where I am likely to explain it all with a wave of my wand and *poof* magic!
Melissa - I had this flash of others dissecting my work and putting a formula together...then asking me if this is how I saw it...
And I shake my head, shrug and break land speed records running away...
I'm off the opinion that if you figure out how someone did something, that is your method. Not necessarily theirs. It's like how when I was working on my degree and we'd have to interpret a poem or a short story.
I got A's when my interpretation wasn't the standard and accepted interpretation. Why? Well, I backed it up with rational.
What was the authors intent? Who the hell knows? They're dead! Anything we came up with was nothing more than a best guess anyway!
Bo'sun! Good to see you!
I like it! The pretty pony school of writing.
I have to agree, Q has a wondrous way of making it all sound magical and poetic. But I do think all the best scientists do!
Dee doesn't see it as instinctual or intuition based at all? I find that fascinating!
I think, despite my personal fear of formula, that studying how good writing comes about works for me, too. As long as I don't try to take it back to my writing desk and apply it directly. I have to let the initial story grow organically before I take the pruning scissors to it.
Sorry, Hels, did I use the wrong word? Well, it's Friday, so...things happen!
I totally get grey and I didn't mean it to sound adversarial. I would guess the best writers keep the arsenal of writing tools in a constant state of availability around their desk... If they need to step back and snag up some in depth GMC, they can do it.
And I think, just think...I'm doing this. But I can't stop to think about it. If I do the sabertooth will pounce.
I think the extent of how chatty characters are is a reflection of how much control our subconscious has on our writing.
I can see what Donnaroo is saying...the logic brain wants to use the break, the characters/intuitive brain wants to put the balls to the wall and haul ass.
Somehow, I ignore what my feet are doing and just keep steering! ;-)
Well, glad to hear Earl didn't deliver the total smackdown forecast. Whew!
Sounded like that smackdown was the school!
Wow, do I win a prize for fastest dead blog?
Bonnie is pleased, we're getting out earlier than norm...
Yep, you win. I'd give you a piece of my pizza as a prize, but it's a personal pan and those aren't really big enough to share.
Mmm, personal pan pizza sounds good. I'm getting ready to go back out to have lunch with BFF. I think we're going to Chipotle (which means there'll be leftovers for dinner -- LOL -- two meals for the price of one!)
Wicked humid today -- wish Earl would get the rain started here.
I wish he'd take the rain out of here. I had to slosh through puddles to get this pizza and my umbrella nearly blew away.
Pizza and Chipotle! You guys are living big! And I sit here, with my oatmeal...but at least I have no humid heat and rain...
Since we haven't had a lot of humidity this summer, it feels worse -- I guess since we didn't have a chance to build up a tolerance for it. LOL Plus, just a few days ago it was COLD, and I was wearing a scarf and slippers around the house. LOL
Freakin' New England. LOL
On Wednesday, Watsonville broke a heat record, hit 93, which beat the old record of 87 by quite a bit! And that record was set back in the late 50s. And today? Foggy, chilly. Typical!
Oh, my characters chatter at me...no worries.
I get what you're saying, Janga. I think, for me, it's a matter of holding true to the illusion of the third wall. If I step into the world of analyzing and considering my 'creative process' ... it will seduce me into losing my character voices and only hearing myself, debating with myself.
I can easily be lured into discussions regarding particular methods...so such an extent I have to be careful not to wander away from what I'm really trying to do. Just write.
I totally agree that I am a conglomeration of everything I've read. Good and, unfortunately, bad. Though it wasn't always considered bad. (A lot of telling goes on in early scifi...)
And everyone figures these things out on their own, at their own pace and in the manner best suited to enrich their writing.
I hope!
Janga: I contend that the best writing manuals for fiction writers are well-written novels.
Couldn't agree more. And what other profession allows you to enjoy a good read while learning the trade! :lol:
When you have accumulated knowledge of a topic, then gut instinct, or intuition, is usually a better guide than detailed analysis. Gerd Gigenzer (a scientist) has studied the phenomenon in his very readable ‘The intelligence of the unconscious'.
I suspect that a more analytical perspective could be important at the revision stage though!
Q - Yup. That is what I'm hoping. That the analytical can just be held off until I'm ready for revision. Otherwise, it will slow me down and that sabertooth will eat me.
I really embrace the concept of our unconscious and the wisdom it holds. We evolved for practical reasons to react as we do...and sometimes that goes to war with the modern world. But sometimes, sometimes! It's all about saving our life, our sanity, what is precious to us. And we need to listen!
And with that! I'm off to see to Bonnie again and lunch...since we're meandering about so slowly, stuck in a doldrum, I'm taking me time!
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