Yesterday, on the way back from the shops, an idea hit me – a section of plotline for the second novel, which is currently mostly a bunch of freewrites and crappy drafts. You know that feeling, that holistic feeling when dots are suddenly joined in your head, or pieces of a puzzle that have been drifting around click into place? That was it.
I managed to hold it until I got home and rushed to turn the computer on. I got it all down.
Today, I decided to continue with it – just draft, getting it down, however.
A sentence came into my mind. “Tom padded through the almond groves with the dogs.” Sounded familiar. I did a search and a document came up [Second Novel Working Title] Freewrite.doc Huh? It was in a completely different folder (actually it was in a sub-folder of the First Novel Old Stuff folder – go figure.)
But when I read it, I almost self-combusted with excitement. It was all there: the background, the storyline leading up to the plot point idea I had yesterday – complete with hook, cliffhanger etc.
Once again I was awed by the creative process. As I’m always banging on and on (my workshop people will bear witness to this), everyday to-do-list mind doesn’t do the creative work. Something bigger, with a much broader vision, with access to all knowledge, something beyond the everyday mind, does it.
You see, the doc the search brought up was written in 2009.
Yeah – I’m a slow writer, to put it mildly. But that’s not the point. The point is, the whole thing was done by my unconscious mind – what I call the creative mind, or Big Mind. It remembers everything. It knows where everything is. It knows how to join the dots. It says things like: the bit of the story that’s missing is on a scrap of paper in the shoebox labelled WooWoo Stuff. Or: search for ‘Tom almond groves dogs’
But you have to trust it. As long as you believe that you – everyday to-do-list you – does the creative work, Big Mind will say: ok, fine, I know when I’m not wanted. And check out.
Trust it.
2 Responses
That’s so true, Val.Often it’s after a night’s sleep that the dots join or a new point is crystal clear. Sometimes, too, in a difficult situation (nothing to do with writing), maybe it’s Big Mind that reminds me of a key that unlocks it – embedded in some poem I’ve written years before.
Hi Eleanor
Absolutely! In general we are much too in our heads. The rational logical linear cause-effect brain skills are overdeveloped – and over valued. This is one of my favourite rants 🙂