Writers aren't exactly people, they're a lot of people trying to be one person. F.Scott Fitzgerald

Monday, May 23, 2011

SUBCONCIOUS WRITING or SLIPPING INTO " THE ZONE"?

        I am a writer and I have always been a writer.However;after I retired I began a career as a writer. I started with a romance suspense because I love to read the genre and I understand a lot more about life and love than I did at twenty. I based my characters loosely on people I know or have known in my 66 years. I decided to base the hero on the men in my life I have admired and loved. I combined them all to make the kind of man who I wished I could have found and married. The heroine is a combination of me and the woman I wished I could have been. The secondary characters are all based on real people,the farm was real and some of the incidents are real. Does this make it truly a fiction novel? For the most part yes.The overall story line is fiction with elements based on true incidents.
     I fell in love with the characters and the story.I finished it ,revised and edited it as well as I could and put the manuscript in a folder where it remains five years later.

    I have another romantic suspense I am working on,that lost my attention after it took a wrong turn.I can hear the voices of my characters pleading with me now and then to dust them off and bring them out of the dark and into the light and finish the revisions I started a few years ago..I will soon,I promised them again as I have for the last two years.

    That out of the way, I have a quick story to tell that I think a lot of writers will identify with.

         I had a dream and woke with a premise for a story that I felt was really different. Maybe not totally unique,but definitely different.I suppose it would fit under speculative fiction with elements of romance or maybe a paranormal romance.It is definitely a ,"what if novel", with a different spin.     
       Now this is the part that blindsided me.  I had one of those moments a few days ago while writing a small scene in "Evolution of Monsters".

      I sat down one morning and started working on my latest novel "Evolution of Monsters". I had left my hero and heroine facing an important life changing event when apparently I entered what I call,"THE ZONE!"Most writers know about entering that state in writing where the subconscious takes over and writes.Minutes,hours or maybe a lifetime passes until either you  snap back or drift back to awareness and stare stupidly at what you have written that you don't even remember writing.

         I wasn't aware I was gone until I blinked and I was back. I was surprised to find that I had written over three pages about two of my secondary characters and started to remove the entire episode,almost an entire chapter until I read it again, out loud this time, and realized it was pretty darn good.  
        Strong,emotional,pertinent to the story and very touchingly romantic.I still don't know if I will keep it in this story or save it for a book of their own.Either way the scenes were and still are between two important secondary characters who have an unrequited love for each other. I had written over three pages of scenes about why they weren't together, how they felt, and what caused them to finally get together and what happens between them.

        I was surprised to find that I had written this touching,very emotional encounter about them and had not even thought about doing so.I started to remove the entire episode,almost an entire chapter, until I read it again, out loud this time, and realized it was pretty darn good.Strong,emotional,pertinent to the story and very touchingly romantic.I still don't know if I will keep it in this story or save it for a book of their own.Either way it was an event that has happened to me before and I pray will happen again and again.Some of my best writing has been when I slip into that "subconscious writing mode".
     I wonder how many other writers and authors have had this same experience or one similar?

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