A State Of Focused Wonder
Cross-posted to the Deadline Dames. Our anniversary is coming up, with lots of giveaways and other cool things. Stay tuned…
I’ve been writing about writing pretty much every day this week, and I’m fighting off a cold, so I’m staring at the Friday blog post and wondering what the hell to say. The week has somewhat sneaked-up on me, batting its eyelashes and promising me that I’d be able to get everything done.
Then it turned around and ran away laughing. That should have been my first clue.
Anyway. I am low on patience and advice this morning, mostly because of the cold but also because my personal life has settled down somewhat and I’m back up to normal productivity. Which means I’m wandering around all day with a head full of story, just itching to get it down. Everything that isn’t writing is suddenly like a brassiere that doesn’t fit right–an annoyance at best, a painful annoyance at worst. I am either typing madly, or rushing through what I need to get through in order to make the house function so I can get back to typing…or I am doing what I call “doing story”. Which looks a lot like staring into space with bright eyes and an abstract expression.
When I sit and stare out the window, I am not just staring. Far from. I am putting together pieces inside my head, engaged in a focused type of creative dream that could be mistaken for no work at all.
Someone once told me that the most productive hours a child’s brain spends is when it’s daydreaming. That daydreaming was essential and necessary, and to just let kids do it. It’s not like I needed the advice–I think I was, what, sixteen? But I always remembered it, for some reason, and nowadays I think it’s true. Not just for children but for creatives as well.
There are quite a few “altered states” that give me grist for the writing mill. One is a sort of half-dream I fall into while exercising. Sometimes I’ll even try dialogue out loud while I do this–I think best while I’m moving, and I tend to try spoken lines aloud a couple times to make sure I’ve got the rhythm and tone right. Another is the “checkout”, where during a conversation a chance comment or expression will trigger a breakthrough in a story, and I’ll zone out, sometimes midsentence, while all my brainpower shifts over to testing and filing that breakthrough.
People who know me are used to this, and they usually just wait until I come back a few seconds later, then prompt me to finish my sentence. God bless ‘em. It can’t be easy talking to me on days like that. I AM paying attention, I just get hijacked every once in a while.
There’s also a sort of right-brain state that happens while driving, where a lot of plot tangles get sorted out and a-ha! moments happen. Driving is great for the creative muscles.
But by far the most intense state is when I’ve reached the end of a scene I can clearly see, and am faced with the fogbank of What Comes Next. This is when I look out the window, frowning a little, and the wheels inside my head turn. I can’t tell you what I’m thinking at times like this; it’s a nonverbal state of focused wonder. I am not quite seeing what I’m looking at, but I’m not quite blind either. The world is full of magic, and the magic coalesces–sometimes with a snap, sometimes gradually. But it always comes clear, and then I know What Happens Next. Of course, I think. It makes perfect sense. Oh, that’s why!
I sometimes think that state–the focused wonder–is the drug that keeps me coming back to writing. Because it feels so goddamn good. Sometimes, the fierce relaxation of being really in the groove and going along, each sentence unreeling to thread me through the labyrinth, takes on that aspect of working wonder and it’s those times, my friends, where I feel like I’m flying over the page.
I suppose a neurologist could tell me what was going on inside my brain at those times, at least chemically and electrically. That would lessen the magic not a whit. Reliably getting into that state, figuring out how to trigger it and how to keep it going, is something every writer has to find for him- or herself. This is part of why the habit of writing is so important, why I harp on doing it consistently. Training yourself to use that creative frame of mind is just like training yourself for anything else, it takes effort. Catching that brainwave and riding it gets a lot easier with consistent practice.
What, you thought I’d tell you there was an easy way? Ha. You don’t know me vewwy well, wabbit, if you thought that.
Anyway. The impatience is mounting, I have this scene to get back to, and I know exactly what happens next. Catch you later, gator.
And keep writing.
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Tags: deadline dames, Friday Writing, Joy, the goddamn Muse
January 15th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
You don’t know me vewwy well, wabbit
….ssshhhh… it Huntin Season…..
January 15th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
This. Yes. Thank you. (altered states, daydreaming, checking out…)
There are days when I think I’m crazy or wasting my time. I keep telling myself it’s all a useful part of the creative process but my “show me the end product” side of my brain scoffs.
Knowing someone else does this and values it and it works for her… helps. Thank you.
January 16th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Wouldn’t a functional MRI of a writer’s brain be interesting to see? You could compare brain activity during different “states” of story creation…..
January 16th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
mmm, me too. i go through stories and everything’s flexible while i wander a little way down possible paths, and while walking through the world, little things pop up that i just _know_ will be useful, and then it happens: everything clicks. an Idea materializes out of the chaos like a newborn, weak, wet and messy, but real and alive and perfect.
i think everyone needs to daydream, strech their mind, think about things a little. not just children and creatives, but everyone. it seems like falling out of the habit of “daydreaming” is part of growing up, and possible the reason people seem to get stuck in the routine circles they carve into the work. to spread your wings and fly is impossible, but in one’s head, it’s as easy as picking your nose. the idea that anything is possible and that things can and will change seems to wilt and die in the face of the blistering, undeniable, mudane reality of everyday life, which is darn hard to change and can be anything from dull to downright horrid. is freedom less real because it lives behind your eyes instead of in front of them? because i can think of almost no one who has real, complete freedom in the mundane world: we are all chained somehow, be it by money, or love, or physical inability, or even our own mind. it’s not like these are bad ties– i don’t want to see someone murder their family and then run off to circumnavigate the world because they are free to– but we feel them anyway, and can be quite heavy. they can be heavy enough to wipe out even the thought of freedom from us, which is the only true captivity; while we have hope, we have everything. and to hope is to be free, in some intangible way.
anyways, i’ll shut up now. but i saw a play last night, about, among other things, a boy who killed himself. and the only reason i can see for someone to kill themself, is because it is the only option for freedom they have left: life is a prison and death the door out. dor some people, this may well be, but for others (myself included) the hope that can be found behind one’s eyes can give birth to the patience and determination to find some freedom, some better or different state in life. sometimes it comes in the form of books, or movies, or is hidden entirely in one’s head, but the idea of freedom is perhaps the most powerful force on earth.