Mind Boggled
I am continually amazed at the human brain. The book I am writing is progressing slowly, mostly because of time constraints, but also because I am a n00b. For the past three weeks I have been shouldering through chapter seven in the desire to work on chapter eight because it will be fun, and so chapter seven has a certain, shall we say, suckness. Not meaning that's bad of course, and this is my point. See, I can't write what I want until I see what I want to say.
The brain is a massive rootball of networked synapses numbering in the hundreds of billions, essentially the same number as stars in our galaxy. And all those cells do is relate, relate, relate. I will concede there are a few that control some measly organs like the heart and lungs, and there are still others which exist to be sacrificed to the Beer God. But mostly those cells relate one thing with another. They might relate the number three to the holy trinity, baseball, an oak tree, and a Scottish Terrier, which was your fourth pet, which your brain brings up because your third died. This simple sequence of relations would in itself be amazing, but your brain piles on the wonder by making these jumps any old time it feels like. This was the case this morning, in the shower, while thinking about, of all things, a leaky shower head.
Again, the suckness of chapter seven was not on my mind at the time, having written precious little about it the previous night, and instead being focused on how water was getting out of my shower and into my basement. I gave the shower head a scrutinizing scowl and twisted the spray to one side, then the other, and determine that what I have is a problem. Then it suddenly dawns on me that what I really need for chapter seven is a problem, a conflict specific to that chapter. The actual conflict suddenly jumps into my head right then as well and I hold onto it as I leap out of the shower and towel off and head straight to the computer to write it down, pants unbuckled, shirtless, and water dripping onto the floor.
By spending the time writing what I didn't want, I provided myself with the raw material to find out what I wanted, even if I didn't know what it was, or when I would be working on it. The brain does not shut off, and it is important in writing to remember that. Show up and do the work, and things will happen. Creativity is not only the desired result, but it is the background process as well.
The brain is a massive rootball of networked synapses numbering in the hundreds of billions, essentially the same number as stars in our galaxy. And all those cells do is relate, relate, relate. I will concede there are a few that control some measly organs like the heart and lungs, and there are still others which exist to be sacrificed to the Beer God. But mostly those cells relate one thing with another. They might relate the number three to the holy trinity, baseball, an oak tree, and a Scottish Terrier, which was your fourth pet, which your brain brings up because your third died. This simple sequence of relations would in itself be amazing, but your brain piles on the wonder by making these jumps any old time it feels like. This was the case this morning, in the shower, while thinking about, of all things, a leaky shower head.
Again, the suckness of chapter seven was not on my mind at the time, having written precious little about it the previous night, and instead being focused on how water was getting out of my shower and into my basement. I gave the shower head a scrutinizing scowl and twisted the spray to one side, then the other, and determine that what I have is a problem. Then it suddenly dawns on me that what I really need for chapter seven is a problem, a conflict specific to that chapter. The actual conflict suddenly jumps into my head right then as well and I hold onto it as I leap out of the shower and towel off and head straight to the computer to write it down, pants unbuckled, shirtless, and water dripping onto the floor.
By spending the time writing what I didn't want, I provided myself with the raw material to find out what I wanted, even if I didn't know what it was, or when I would be working on it. The brain does not shut off, and it is important in writing to remember that. Show up and do the work, and things will happen. Creativity is not only the desired result, but it is the background process as well.
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