Subconscious Writing: The Power of the Mind

How many times have you been writing, and I mean really in the zone, only to read back through your work and find a sentence that you just don't remember writing. You can't even remember ever thinking it. It doesn't fit the plot, not really, and just seems completely out-of-place.

You leave it in however, and carry on because editing comes later. Then suddenly, as the story follows that natural course of evolution that all plots go through, something happens. A new avenue opens up and suddenly, without ever really knowing it, that line from earlier suddenly makes sense. More than that, it ties things together. It acts as the perfect pre-cursor for what was to come.

This has happened to me several times over the years. I am prone to zoning out while I write. I just kind of get lost in my mind and before I know it I have written half a dozen pages, or more. Most recently I was writing something, and a line of dialogue slipped its way onto the page. It was nothing, but twenty thousand words later my plot took a turn which I had not planned, and all of a sudden this one line became a key moment in the book.

What I am getting it, I guess, is that maybe this is what makes writers writers. I am part of an email group where a rather heated argument is now raging because someone said that anybody can write a great book. I understand what they were trying to say, but their choice of words was worse than poor. I think it takes a certain person to be a writer. It goes to say that there is a difference between being a writer, and being someone who wrote a book.

Could it be that the mind of a writer works constantly, and I mean on a subconscious level. Drawing conclusions and creating intricate relationships between characters that don't ever come to the surface. Unless we slip of into these zones whereby our mind takes complete control and the true intricacies of our work can be revealed.

Has anything like this ever happened to you?