Notes on The Craft: The Writer’s Trance
Back in the early Oughts, when my ex and I split and my life - personal and professional - had hit bottom hard, one of the paths up I explored was investigation of Neurolinguistic Programming.
That led me to self-hypnosis. I even took a class at the (sadly) departed Sage Ways seminar center here in Burque.
I accepted there was much behind self-hypnosis immediately, because I recognized one fact right off: when I’m writing I tend to go into an unmistakable trance state. The deeper in I am, the better - and more, for want of a better word, ecstatic - the writing goes.
People have expressed much amazement at my ability to write seemingly anywhere: in airports, on trains, even at parties. Last night at the monthly ASFS meeting, which I attended in part because I’ve been so isolated of late and at risk of turning into a cheese - I startled club newcomer Gerald Weinberg
It’s the trance, folks.
One thing I’ve tried to do with indifferent success has been learn how consistently to put myself deep into writing-trance. It’s never been reliable with me. And for a while I’ve had a hard time really, I guess, committing to it.
At this last Bubonicon, I was on a panel about how writers write. Somewhat to my surprise it was well-attended. Even more to my surprise it actually turned out to be interesting - to me, and on the evidence, both my fellow panelists (who included Betsy James and Walter Jon Williams; I’ve spaced out the others for the moment: sorry) and for the audience.
For my opening statement I sucked it up and took what I thought was the radical step of copping to the whole writer’s trance thing. I fully expected to get hit with Massive Skeptical Denial, both from the rest of the panel and the audience.
Instead, everybody bought into it completely. The other authors nodded and proceeded to talk about their own experiences of what I’d termed the Writer’s Trance. I don’t know if they had thought of it in those terms before - I rather suspect not, although I may be flattering myself. But they all recognized the phenomenon and discussed it as a trance state.
As I said, I’ve had trouble getting into that state for some time. This last week, though, it’s been coming on me regularly and well. I’ve been falling daily into the Zone both on Annja and The Dinosaur Lords.
Last night it was DinoLords. Today it was the new Rogue Angel. I just a few minutes ago emerged from a super-intense Writing Trance with a loose preliminary expanded draft of the synopsis that truly smokes.
The experience is hard to come to grips with, harder to describe. It’s the easiest thing in the world when it happens, and it’s almost orgasmic. It is pure creation. That’s a colossal rush.
Yet it’s not easy. For one thing I’ve been fighting, pretty clearly, going into that trance. For years. Decades, in fact.
While I suspect there’s more personal issues behind that than anything intrinsic to the Trance or The Craft (of writing, BTW) it is also exhausting as hell to undergo the trance. Especially as deep and intense as this one was today.
I’m wrung.
But … dang. This is great. This is how I want to live, how I should live, how I choose to live.
I am learning to let myself give way to the Trance. It’s what I’ve striven for for years.
And that’s one of the greatest milestones in my life.
October 14th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
I am totally there with you on the trance thing….been doing that since I was a kid and just starting writing. I do it when I am onstage as well.
I write damn well when I am trancing….but you ought to see the typos. Trying to explain them and how I made such silly mistakes is a little unnerving. Luckily, Matt does roughly the same thing…but not quite the same…so he slightly understands.
Matt, however, does not write in a single, stream-of-consciousness mega blurb but crafts and smooths as he goes, not leaving his prose behind him unless it is, in his mind, perfect. When something eludes him, he paces and wanders the house muttering.
Me, I sit down and just go. I use broad strokes and just keep writing and writing until something physical breaks the spell…my hand cramps up or nature calls. If I am at a reasonable stopping point, I might go back and read over what I wrote, amazed by finding words there that I don’t remember having written. When I am “under” I see the images and hear the dialouge and don’t remember writing any of the actual verbage used. So it is always a pleasant surprise to go back through and see what’s there!
^_^