Writing with the Subconscious

There's been a flood of sage advice coming at me lately, for what reason I don't know.  Truth be told, none of it has really helped . . . yet.  I assume that at some point that will change.  Possibly when I begin to heed said advice, but lets not get overly speculative here.  Yesterday, my Dad gave me a book on the subject of writing called, "Writing Down the Bones."  He doesn't read these sorts of things so Lords know where he got it from.  It just sort of popped up out of nowhere, with no explicable reason for him having it, or wanting to read it,  or having the motivation to get dressed, leave his house, and buy things.  But really, it seems like a decent enough book when its all said and done.  Or at least, it seems that way from the cover and the couple of pictures I saw while flipping through it.  

Its written by some lady named Natalie Goldberg, who by odd coincidences, happens to live in Taos.  Or at least she did when she was alive.  She may still be alive for all I know, but I wanted to put that qualifier in there just in case she's at the bottom of a ravine right now, her neck being chewed clean through by coyotes.  If that were the case, I'd come out quite the fool if I said she was still alive, eh?   The fact that she lives in Taos, and that her book was in random possession by my own father, leads me to believe, by the logic of my Hollywood-trained brain, that I'm going to have a life crisis soon and that I'm going to have a cute- meet with Mrs. Goldberg at a bus  depot.  She'll listen to my foibles and set me on the path to self-actualization in my third act.   I can't wait.   Until then, I'll just read the book and from the bits and pieces that I've managed to read while waiting for the toaster to pop up with my tasty tortilla nibblets, her book actually seems rather fascinating.  We seem to have drawn similar conclusions about the craft.  

In a chapter titled, 'Composting,' she illuminates with much greater clarity, a concept that I've been rambling on about for some time now: the idea that failed writing is necessary.  I'll admit right now that I hadn't come to the exact conclusion as she, and actually do prefer her version of it.  Here's the gist: the subconscious works, like a computational sub-routine, quietly in the background of your thoughts.  Spontaneous leaps of creativity, logic, and understanding come from this capacity of the subconscious.  In order for this part of mind to work efficiently, we need to feed it raw materials, events, characters, things from our past, emotions, experiences, whatever.  By writing, in freeform, in automatic writing, in journals, diaries, blogs, we do precisely this.  We till the soil of our thought, turn over ideas, bring them to the surface and let them breathe, settle.  

While you're working away at other things consciously, like say, trying to perfectly toast a tortilla so that the surface temperature is just right for melting butter into a gooey puddle of deliciousness, you're subconscious is beneath it all, toiling in the dark recesses of your brain.  It may come to conclusions down there in the cellar that you never would have come to just by analysis, and when its done and ready with one of those conclusions, they bubble up to the surface at seemingly random times, like say, while eating a soft, buttery tortilla.  We call these Eureka! moments.  Not necessarily having anything to do with the Sci-Fi Channel show, Eureka!, but having more to do with the surprise and clarity of the thought bubbling up from the obscure machinery of the mind.

When you're writing out the back of your behind, like I usually do on this blog, and failing miserably at the point you're trying desperately to illustrate, you're doing yourself quite a service.  Isn't that nice to hear?  You are actively feeding the subconscious the materials it needs to germinate the greater ideas, the more coherent ones that you will ideally capitalize on once you recognize them.  Most writers know this intuitively, as I did for many years.  This why most novels are proceeded by the writing of pages and pages and pages of 'notes,' and why note taking is essential to the process of non-fiction writing.  Everything feeds into the subconscious and gets slushed around like so much wet concrete until the appropriate moment.

My biggest revelation, lately has been my understanding that the first draft of a story is essentially a part of this process: composting.  This is why most writing advice urges you to hurry through the first draft as quickly as possible.  The idea is to culminate the final stage of rumination inside of your subconscious so that the second draft will be more finely crafted.  In general terms, the first draft is the great big pile of shit from which grows the real story.  Hurry through it, get that big ol' plop down and let it sit.  It doesn't matter how terrible this version of the story is, because, in essence, it is NOT a version of the story.  Its nothing more than a comprehensive set of notes from which you will be able to see what works, what doesn't, and why.  Consider this an intentional failure.  The first draft will stink, get used to that concept and begin believing in the necessity of it stinking.  Compost doesn't come in any other odors. . . . Tortillas on the other hand, will never cease in their savory fragrances and so, I'm going to go eat one.  Adios, o' mi hermanos y amigos solomente.