A lot of ideas for writers come from the unconscious.
Ideas will oftimes surface as passing thoughts, unbidden and unexpected. While focusing on one endeavor, a thought will pop into your mind that is totally and abruptly out of place, intriguing and curious.
Engaging the unconscious mind is not difficult. It’s what happens when you try to remember an address, or a phone number, or the name of that actor you just saw on TV. After a while you give up and move on, abandoning your frustration and shifting your attention back to something else. But then, minutes later, the answer jumps out at you and surprises you, because you thought you’d given up trying to recall it.
Sometimes this process occurs during the day. Sometimes it happens at night.
I am one of those lucky people that can fall asleep within a minute or two of my head hitting the pillow. My wife on the other hand often goes to bed only to stare at the ceiling for three hours or more. (She hates me for that.)
One of the tricks that I use to fall asleep so quickly is to start thinking about a story that I am writing that I am stuck on.
As I consider different scenarios, scenes, or actions for the story, my mind quickly gets lost in a seemingly endless review of possible plotlines, dialogues, and venues for the particular piece of fiction that is troubling me. In moments, I am tossed into a world of imagination where I glimpse unexpected realities and possibilities. As I sink into a dream, my thoughts sometimes progress like this:
Well, maybe the story isn’t that bad. There are a lot of ways I could fix it. For instance, what if the character said this... Or maybe the people could do that.
No, that won’t work.
Well, then how about...
No, that’s stupid.
Actually, it’s not that bad. But if you did this, that would happen that would REALLY be stupid.
Yeah, that’s definitely not an option.
Well, how about this then?
Wait. That could work. What if we add this?
Oh...we’re on a roll. If we did that, then this would be possible.
Wait, play that back again, and say this instead.
Yeah, that’s better. But what do we do then? I hadn’t thought of getting my guys into this situation.
Oh, oh... I know.... how about....
And my mind spins into insane cycles of what-if scenarios that fill the night. Dreams come quickly.
It’s not uncommon for me to wake and run to my laptop to type madly trying to jot down an idea before it completely fades.
More often, I wake only to lose whatever wonderful solution I had discovered. Then, left with nothing but the disappointment and frustration of that loss, I progress through the day, even though the lost idea nags me at the back of my mind... at least until I implausibly somehow reconstruct it. Sometimes my subconscious rediscovers that misplaced solution and the idea surfaces into my conscious mind like a telephone number that I forgot that I’d wanted to remember. My subconscious must have kept working on the problem while I was doing other things... because I knew that the solution was out there somewhere. I just had to remember where I put it.
It’s not schizophrenia. Really. I don’t have multiple personalities. And I’m not really hearing voices. It’s more like internal dialogue... things that I would actually say to myself out loud if doing so wouldn’t make me seem totally insane to others if they overheard.
Sometimes the trick to writing is finding and catching ideas as they rush past you. It helps if you can make use of your unconscious mind to help.
It’s tiring and exhausting sometimes, but that’s another reason that I fall asleep so quickly.
