Writing Tip: Trust Your Subconscious

I was reading an article this week in Discover about the unconscious and how much of our lives is really controlled by the subconscious rather than the conscious mind. This is something that I have been arguing for a long time. It comes up strangely in political debates with both conservatives and liberals. I laugh a little at both sides at their naive belief that we can change humanity in any significant way. I just don't believe that. I think that people are mostly machines determined by biology. Of course, there are those few moments where we break out of biology, but not many of them.

OK, well, on to writing. Writers write for many reasons, or they say they write for many reasons. I don't believe it. I think there is only one reason that we write. It's because we have a deep need to control our environment. We humans have these enormous brains capable of understanding the future and of being conscious. But the reality is that this has both advantages and disadvantages. Yes, it allows us to manipulate our environment and take over the world, enslave other species. But it also means that we have to live with enormous anxiety. We are capable of imagining a thousand deaths every day. And writing, all creative endeavor, is in my experience, an attempt to imagine also that we control our own lives. That we shape ourselves most of all.

I don't really believe in a subconscious uberstory that we are all telling like Karl Jung. But I do think that we humans tell similar stories because we are so very similiar, no matter who or where we are, or how "developed" or "advanced" we become. And this is why I think that writers who think they control their own writing are just standing in the way of their own subconscious minds. I believe it is important to read, to feed my subconscious images and plot lines. And then I believe it is important to set aside a time each day to allow my subconscious to be free to "play." I believe it is important to make sure that I don't stifle the subconscious with too many critical thoughts.

But mostly I just let the subconscious take over when I sit down at the keyboard. I try to step aside and let the story take control. If that sounds mystical, I don't really mean it to be. I certainly think that you have to work with what the subconscious gives you to make it readable and publishable. But I suppose this is why in the end I am resistant to the idea of outlining or pre-planning books. It's just that I think that doing so often gets in the way of the play of the subconscious and is in some ways a lie, telling ourselves that *we* control our own stories. Not sure if this is actually advice or more like a manifesto of art.

Hope it is useful. If not, feel free to jettison. What works for your art is what matters, not what works for mine.