on Sunday, she broke.
Jul. 13th, 2008 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lauraanne_gilmanReleased from other obligations, I am spending this warm, muggy Sunday reading, and writing. And [as always] working away at combining the two, which is sometimes harder that it sounds. Especially when you're living a life, too [or trying to, anyway].
So. Stuff that's clattering around in my head, and how it ties into the Writer's-Brain-As-It-Works.
The thing about feeling strongly is that strong feelings -- emotions -- aren't soft and delicate. Not the ones that matter. They dig and they scratch and they howl, they cut too deep and they bind too tightly, and they shatter you like a sledgehammer and drown you like a tsunami.
It's a scary thing, and I understand, intellectually, why people shy away from that, why they protect themselves from it. Strong emotions take it out of you and they promise absolutely nothing in return. And yet, in that lack-of-promise, sometimes you get the most amazing, unexpected, life-changing gifts.
And sometimes all you get is exhaustion. It's restful, every now and again, to let the strong emotions go, to coast along on the shallow tides and never venture deeper. Some people do it their entire lives, and don't feel the lack, don't miss the storm-wrack. But for a writer? I think that's deadly. Story-telling can't be born out of purely intellectual understanding. It has to be gut-level, visceral, emotional. Intellect alone can't carry a plot, can't sell a motivation, can't build a three-dimensional character. If you'll permit me another tortured metaphor, if intellectual process is black ink and white paper, then the emotional process is the color-wash and craypas.
Black and white's got rules, consistency, logic. Colors, they're trickier. They don't always come out the way you expect. Sometimes, mixing those colors is painful. Sometimes it brings up things you'd rather never relive, or want to pretend didn't hurt as much as they did. Sometimes it makes you feel stupid, or sad, or reminds you of a happiness that no longer is. And sometimes it leads you to a better understanding of where you are now.
And sometimes it just lets you empathize with a situation a character's in, to develop them a little better than you could working in only black and white. The trick is to dip your pen so far and no further, to use what you have and let the creative aspect transmute it into what you need (rather than going out in search of Just That Emotion Needed, which is foolishness, IMO and YMMV).
That's my theory on How Writer-minds Work, anyway.
And if it's too hot, and that's all too much to deal with right now? Have a Yoga-bear.
So. Stuff that's clattering around in my head, and how it ties into the Writer's-Brain-As-It-Works.
The thing about feeling strongly is that strong feelings -- emotions -- aren't soft and delicate. Not the ones that matter. They dig and they scratch and they howl, they cut too deep and they bind too tightly, and they shatter you like a sledgehammer and drown you like a tsunami.
It's a scary thing, and I understand, intellectually, why people shy away from that, why they protect themselves from it. Strong emotions take it out of you and they promise absolutely nothing in return. And yet, in that lack-of-promise, sometimes you get the most amazing, unexpected, life-changing gifts.
And sometimes all you get is exhaustion. It's restful, every now and again, to let the strong emotions go, to coast along on the shallow tides and never venture deeper. Some people do it their entire lives, and don't feel the lack, don't miss the storm-wrack. But for a writer? I think that's deadly. Story-telling can't be born out of purely intellectual understanding. It has to be gut-level, visceral, emotional. Intellect alone can't carry a plot, can't sell a motivation, can't build a three-dimensional character. If you'll permit me another tortured metaphor, if intellectual process is black ink and white paper, then the emotional process is the color-wash and craypas.
Black and white's got rules, consistency, logic. Colors, they're trickier. They don't always come out the way you expect. Sometimes, mixing those colors is painful. Sometimes it brings up things you'd rather never relive, or want to pretend didn't hurt as much as they did. Sometimes it makes you feel stupid, or sad, or reminds you of a happiness that no longer is. And sometimes it leads you to a better understanding of where you are now.
And sometimes it just lets you empathize with a situation a character's in, to develop them a little better than you could working in only black and white. The trick is to dip your pen so far and no further, to use what you have and let the creative aspect transmute it into what you need (rather than going out in search of Just That Emotion Needed, which is foolishness, IMO and YMMV).
That's my theory on How Writer-minds Work, anyway.
And if it's too hot, and that's all too much to deal with right now? Have a Yoga-bear.
