I have started to wonder- yes, if you’ve read any of my previous posts you know what this entails. A possibly long post that runs in circles and helps me discover more questions than answers, but alas, I have been gone the past week so a long post is entitled.
I have begun to wonder how my writing reflects on my sub conscious. Or vice-versa to be more precise. See, just shortly before I took my tiny vacation from the net I was going through a bit of a spiritual thing. Then again I’m always going through one of those, I’m constantly thinking on matters of the spirit (not religion but the energy of the universe) but I just needed a break to reassess things. I do that now and then. Take a couple days to have a long thought with myself while I go through and ask myself what I believe, what I know, and how I feel about things in the universe. These are very important issues to me, always have been since I was younger.
Since last time I went through this I learned that some of my beliefs and even my morals have changed slightly. I was slightly shocked on that last bit but not worried. As I constantly walk this path my view of life is constantly changing. It’s only natural and these long talks with myself only make the transition go more smoothly.
Anyways, I’m falling off topic slightly.
What set me off and made me decide I need to take a hard look at certain things was an acquaintance of mine. It might be too soon to call him a friend as we haven’t yet spoken much. He’s a fairly new member on my site and as in all cases I like to chat with each of my members personally. Let them know that the site is not automated but run by an actual person who cares about the views and opinions of others. So, we were talking. I had been particularly exited about speaking with him about a certain spiritual quality and perspective rarely shared even in some of the weirder corners. It was something we had in common. Well, he asked me a lot of questions. I’m used to that, I’m just not used to answering them about myself and on such a close topic.
He asked me what I felt about this, why I felt this, and how I felt it to be true even. I gave a very vague answer that seemed to suffice him but it wasn’t enough for me. Heck, it got me thinking. I wanted more of an answer for myself. I began to worry that maybe I’m wrong and I’m not how I think I am. Confusion ensued and that’s when I decided to think about it as I explain above.
Remember before that though how I said it effected my writing? Well, I’m getting to that.
Shortly after that talk but before I was willing to admit my concerns to myself and have that little mental talk I noticed a strange change in my writing. Not a bad one just strange. I had this sudden scene in my head, during my spare time I like to run through my stories in my head even if the scenes have nothing to do with the story. This one didn’t.
My fave character Fna (i.e. alter ego) was missing, sort of, and all the other characters (even ones from my other projects not related to this story) were searching frantically for her. Worse- they were trapped within her mind which was set to appear like a labyrinth of sorts. Most of the focus was on my other fave character Lst who kept running into ‘version’ of Fna but they ‘weren’t the real her’. They were just parts of her, personalities, morals, beliefs, regrets, and memories and each time he found another it would seem crazier than the last. In the end in came down to the characters reveling to my utter horror (as it causes me to realize what my imagination was so blatantly telling me) that this all happened because Fna lost herself. She’d been worried that she was really nothing but the sum of the two beings inside of her.
I had been worried that this particular but very important belief of mine was merely a result of my biological parents, a fact that would leave me very unhappy. I do not want to be a sum of what they created. I am no longer that- I want to be me which in it’s own way would mean knowing my own reasons for why I felt that way about this belief. Hence the mental discussion that I had shortly after I saw what my mind was doing.
I later went through again and this time the scene played out differently in my mind. It had an and of sorts. Though Fna was like a container for those two beings, they did not make her. Life did. Her spirit was a separate thing and though all energy is in the end connected hers was seasoned with her experiences and knowledge. All the pieces of her came back together and it ended happily.
Now, I know this isn’t actual writing, but part of being a writer isn’t typing or scribing at all. It’s creating to story. Taking a little piece of that spirit inside of you and shaping it into something beautiful. Then you work your bum off trying to get it to stick to the paper. The scenes with those characters that I make in my head- though they had nothing to do with my stories and it wasn’t on paper it was just like that.
So, what I wonder is this- as I go through all my other writing I can see the answer before I even ask it but I wonder not if but how my sub conscious affects my writing. Now after seeing how it helped me discover the problem before it found it’s way into the actual scribe work I wonder how my writing effects my sub conscious.
If the sub conscious works like this on all writer I wonder if any writing can truly be called fiction as it all stems from something so very real.