When I write a story, it's not like I'm thinking about what I'm doing
Photographic fantasy: more agile and faster in discoveries than murky subconscious processes!
A lot of the stuff you do as an actor - or I do, because I can't speak for everyone - is not always consciously thought out. A lot of the time, for me, it's actually just feeling stuff, and it happens all in the moment and your body reacts.
Even though it runs counter to popular belief, Life's critical decisions are usually made in the heart and only later ratified by the brain.
I think about the characters I've created, and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do. There's a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did.
A lot of time, with stories, I'll start out with a title and try to dream myself into the story that it evokes - a kind of subconscious exercise in which I'm trawling for some kind of entryway into fiction.
I readily admit that I have such a great respect for what happens in the human soul that I would be afraid of disturbing and distorting the silent operation of nature by clumsy interference.
When I work alone, it can be like dabbling with a canvas. Maybe you paint over bits, and it starts to form its own life and lead you off in a direction. It becomes an intuitive, subconscious process.
When I'm writing, it's the weirdest thing: it's not even a conscious process. I'm not even thinking when I write, and then all of a sudden, I'll have a song that makes me feel so much better than I did before.
I think the best way to become a character is by osmosis as opposed to thinking directly about stuff.
Generally, it's all of this subconscious stuff. I didn't even know what Lizzobangers was about until it was mastered and I got to listen to it.
Odd that the brain could function on its own, without acquainting him with its purposes, its reasons. But the brain was an organ, like the spleen, heart, kidneys. And they went about their private activities. So why not the brain?
Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.
We do not feel as if we were producing the dreams, it is rather as if the dreams came to us. They are not subject to our control but obey their own laws.
Many ideas happen to us. We have intuition, we have feeling, we have emotion, all of that happens, we don't decide to do it. We don't control it.
Now one does not think during creative work: any more than one thinks when driving a car. One has a background of years — learning — unlearning— success — failure — dreaming — thinking — experience — back it goes — farther back than one's ancestors: all this, — then the moment of creation, the focussing of all into the moment. So I can make — "without thought" — fifteen carefully-considered negatives one every fifteen minutes, — given material with as many possibilities.
It's tapping into something so deep that when I reap the rewards, I do not even know I'm reaping them. It's a more overall kinda thing.
