Creator or Channel of Creation

[sierramcconnell]

I suspect someone who relates to the muse method would get flat results from trying to take the creative reins themselves, while someone who prefers acting as the creative force themselves would produce something muddled and flat if they tried to follow the story rather than lead it.

Not to jump into the middle of your conversation but yes, definitely.

Although the last story I wrote from start to finish was done with a summary, which may be seen as technically planning, and a creator thing to do, it wasn't.

Because the minute I tried to deviate from it, my writing immediately blanked out and seemed like I was trying to squeeze grape juice from a lemon. I hated it, it was hard, and I felt sick. Ugh. I didn't want this. But if I went back to how I felt it should be, like the summary went, how the gut said it should go, it flowed so wonderfully from my fingers!

Which meant, that the story had been channeled, all of it, from start to finish, because they wanted it written as immediately as possible.

Things would come as I needed them. Words and research and so on. Everything came as I needed it.

It's hard to explain when someone doesn't channel how...magical it is. It's like explaining to a skeptic about ghosts.

[Mira]

It feels sort of like building a device. Saying 'machine' sounds too cold and technical. But for me it's having a plan to build something that does a particular thing, not just for me but for the other people who will use the device. (There's that whole 'writing for yourself' versus 'writing for an audience' thing I'm always going on about.) I forge the pieces. I build the basic structure. I experiment with how the pieces are going to interact with one another and the user. I balance the components. I calibrate. I polish. I tighten. I tinker. And finally flip the switch. Hopefully, I end up with a divine machine.

You know I wonder if we're talking left brain and right brain here. I've written from that same place that you describe alot - in fact almost all of my school papers are written from that more analytic place. And even after I've written from a more creative place in my creative writing, I switch into editor mode, which is the same as you described above.

I guess I'm wondering......do you ever find yourself writing from another place? Where the words type out just as you think them, and you sort of get out of your own way? Does that sound familiar at all?

[Margo]

You know I wonder if we're talking left brain and right brain here. I've written from that same place that you describe alot - in fact almost all of my school papers are written from that more analytic place. And even after I've written from a more creative place in my creative writing, I switch into editor mode, which is the same as you described above.

Standard disclaimer: I can only speak for myself, and I doubt any two people have the exact same experience regardless of what position they write from primarily.

I find that I use both when I write, more analytical/left brain for my work writing, more creative/right brain for my fiction. As time has gone on, however, I've stopped thinking of analytical writing as the exclusive domain of the left and creative writing as the exclusive domain of the right. I also write with the editor turned on, resulting in slower but cleaner writing that requires less revision. I know that in other threads people have described a preference for writing quickly with the editor turned off, knowing they will need heavier revisions after the first draft is done. Six of one, half dozen the other.

I guess I'm wondering......do you ever find yourself writing from another place? Where the words type out just as you think them, and you sort of get out of your own way? Does that sound familiar at all?

Yes, and no. Writing from another place? Not so much as writing from a different level of focus. Able to incorporate concepts that have become second nature with techniques that have become second nature, allowing me to think about finer or broader details, as necessary. Yes, I do find myself writing as quickly as I can think. No, I don't get the feeling I'm getting out of the way of anything.

Does it sound familiar? Yes, I've gone the channeling route. I've felt what channelers describe. However, it's not the best technique for me for creative writing. My writing is better when I'm in the creator's seat. I use that channeling frame of mind in other aspects of my life.

I think for some people, channeling is a learning phase and they move to creator after that. I would also assume it works in the opposite direction for others, with creator being a learning phase that later evolves into channeling something from the creative other, whatever they might choose to name that other. Perhaps the ultimate evolution is somewhere in the middle.

[Mira]

Whether I'll move to another place over time, I don't know, Margo - I don't really have enough experience to be sure. All I know is the feeling for me when I channel (whatever it is that I channel - whether it's some deep part of me, or something outside me) is not only a place of joy, but a place of power. When I write from that place, my words have power behind them.

But I think this is a very good example of everyone having a different journey, and writing being a different experience for everyone. That's part of what I find interesting about this thread - it never occured to me that the internal experience of writing could be different for different people - but I can see that it is!

It's interesting.

[Watcher55]

Hi y'all, I'm a n00bee. I go by the name, Watcher - you can call me W if you want but I won't answer. Great board btw, and i'm looking forward to making new friends here.

I guess you could say I’m a channel of creation whose experiences created the story in the first place. The story is already there, I just have to remember it. Smacks of Dude Where’s My Car? I know, but I don’t see how you can separate the writing process from memory. Indeed, there have been times I’ve had to give myself the third degree just to remember how a character ended up with a ceiling beam sticking out of her chest. The cool part is that if I’m not honest with me, I have no pity and bust myself as a liar. “I knew it, who are you protecting? What happened last night? You might as well tell me now, because I can do this all day.”

oh crap, does this mean i'm schizophrenic?

[polymath]

I'm seeing the question of creator or channeler in another light today. The axes of creative writing rules or principles and conventions play an appreciable role in originality. Does one writer, say a creator, create self-imposed conventions to follow and another writer, say a channeler, follows conventional expectations? In a sense a channeler writer channels a consensus's rules, while a creator writer creates a set of self-imposed principles germane to a narrative.

I'm thinking of the ongoing debate about what distinguishes science fiction from fantasy. Many science fiction narratives are impossibly fantastical, and many fantasy narratives are sufficiently credible as to be conceivably possible, at least as far as supernatural magical thinking practices and participation mystique rituals are concerned.

A channeler might channel a cultural zeitgeist phenomena into an original narrative. Like by reinventing revenant parasites. Sympathetic vampires were unthinkable not so long ago when vampires were universally villains. Channeling subcultural passions for vampires into new avenues is to me a reflection of the times. Some new creation, sure, but by and large rechanneling what has come before.

On another hand, science fiction's conventions and conventional motifs channel subconscious or conscious desires. Faster than light travel in a sense reflects a young adult desire to escape the natal nest and thus the creche of humanity. That FTL is fantastical and impossible today doesn't make it absolutely incredible when it channels participation mystique through a subconsious or conscious desire. Time travel too is fantastical and impossible today, but reflects a desire to know the future as surely at least as history has recorded the past and/or experience the past and future as surely as experiencing the present.

A creator might create something entirely new for the cosmos. Where an inspiration arises from might come from current events or a highly inventive mind. H.G. Wells didn't invent the motif of time travel any more than Stephenie Meyers invented vampires. They channeled and reinvented their respective motifs. Someone did invent them some forgotten time before. Isaac Asimov's Psychohistory at the center of the Foundation sagas was invented and rose to prominence shortly before Asimov began the saga. Psychohistory as a science fell out of favor not long after it came forth. Asimov's reinvention imaginatively recreated psychohistory's temporal significance. The science wanted to predict near term future outcomes from past history. The novel motif predicted long term outcomes from mass culture phenomena.

A question I cannot yet answer is whether a writer can truly create an original motif. Somewhere in the mists of time everything has apparently already been invented and waits for reinvention by channeling in the present. I'm reaching but not likely to grasp some original creation in my lifetime. That's one life goal that's not going to be easily achieved. One result from thinking about creator or channeler I've come to is I'm the one to decide what principles and conventions and motifs to channel, what to re-create, when true creation is indicated, and how to reorder their balances for the sake of my writing. What the marketplace will make of it or how the marketplace will categorize it is a matter beyond my control and immediate interest.

[Mira]

Polymath - as well put and cogent as your argument is, I'm afraid I don't agree with a couple of your assumptions.

I think one assumption you're making is that people are channeling the collective unconscious (sp?) That may be true, but it may not be. Also, if they are channeling the collective unconscious, I don't believe they would be channeling conventions. My understanding of the unconscious - at least on a personal level - is that it is pretty much free from rules and conventions. It operates on a much more emotional, basic level. Whether the collective unconscious - assuming it exists - operates the same way is not really known.

Also, for me, when I'm channeling, I am as far from conventional as possible. When I channel, I feel fiercely creative, and words flow quickly, smoothly and clearly without much censorship of any type. The more in tune I am, the more the words move through me without blocks - and that includes social mores.

I was also alittle surprised because your last post seemed to contradict your first post on this thread - unless I misunderstood.

I noticed you never said what your experience of writing is - I'd be curious to know.

[polymath]

Mira,

I suppose writer channeling means to me channeling what's come before, writers who've come before, the rules or conventions or principles in general and by genre picked up along the way consciously, subconsciously, and nonconsciously from reading for entertainment and assignment and investigation. Whatever supernatural writing influence channeling might have I leave to the imagination.

I channel according to the above. I'm some of both, channeler and creator, at least reinventor, and prospecting for mystic writer. By mystic I don't mean mystical in the supernatural sense but an inspired transcendence of being for, from, and within a creative work. My woodworking latheware does that for those who experience my intent. They're usually buyers too. The delight in their eyes, their tactile passion for carressing the wares is a mutual experience transcending our secretive selves and sharing blissful moments of rapport's rapture. I'd like to capture that in my writing, thus my pursuit of mystical writing for the participation mystique of a well-crafted creative vision.

[Mira]

Supernatural, polymath?

No, spiritual. At least for me. Deeply spiritual.

Your words about your woodworking are beautiful. I suspect we're talking about the same thing - we may privately define it differently - but I suspect we mean something very similar.

[Hannah Jenny]

Oh, this is always fun to talk about. I am a "channeler," although I've never used that word for it. When I'm at the very beginning of writing something--coming up with the first characters, getting my first vague idea of what the story will be about--it is consciously me coming up with things. But once I start really writing, I am "figuring out" how the story "actually goes," not declaring it from some perspective outside of the story. I have always been perennially puzzled how anyone detaches from their story enough to just coldly (from my perspective) "decide" what happens, but the more objective part of me accepts that we each have our different modes of creation and there is nothing wrong with that.

[Margo]

I have always been perennially puzzled how anyone detaches from their story enough to just coldly (from my perspective) "decide" what happens, but the more objective part of me accepts that we each have our different modes of creation and there is nothing wrong with that.

I felt the same way before it became my common practice. Now I look at channeler's struggling with a story aspect and think, Why don't they just change it if it's not working? But I remember what it's like feeling that the story has a life beyond mine and realize they can't change it. It just is what it is.

So, anyway, it looks so far like Sommer, Louise, and I are in the creator ranks, sierra and Mira and Hannah are muse-channelers, and polymath and Quill are in-between (using the muse definition rather than custom definitions of channelers, which seem to differ from person to person - surprise, surprise) but seem to describe creating more than channeling. bcomet and Fenris say both but seem to describe channeling more than creating. I gotta admit, I have no idea what Watcher55 said. :)

It does indeed appear as though it's coming out as a spectrum. I'm a little surprised at how evenly distributed it appears to be from such a small sample.

[polymath]

I don't see channeling as a muse's influence any more than a supernatural influence. I see channeling as an intuitive process combining the conscious, subconscious, and nonconscious minds into a working whole. A lot of learning happens by osmositic absorbtion directly into the subconscious and nonconscious minds. It comes out in moments of distraction, dreaming, woolgathering, and crisis. Working on pending deadlines takes advantage of that sense of crisis channeling.

I'm inclinded to use the backminds for conscious advantage. For example, researching a topic or motif, a method or a theme to exhaustion and letting it ferment in the subconscious processor until it's completed calculating and sorting and meshing the data into a cohesive whole. It comes out as a waking dream ready for pragmatic reassembly. I know it's ready for realization when a dream closely parallels a conscious parcel.

For me, channeling is realizing a personal compilation of purposed and consequent experience from the sum of creation.

[Margo]

I don't see channeling as a muse's influence any more than a supernatural influence.

I see what you're saying, polymath. However, that's what I intended when I specifically described channeling as interacting with a creative other in the form of a platonic form or a muse. By your definition, I'd say I'm also a channeler. We're getting caught up in personal definitions of terms when the basic issue is simply the question of whether you are the decision-maker in your process (through virtue of your study, your experience, etc) or whether you feel an independent platonic form or muse or true other guiding or even dictating the process.

Which is not to say that people going into detail about their relationship to their process has not been extremely helpful, enlightening, entertaining, etc, but the back and forth over personal definitions rather than personal details becomes a Tower of Babel issue.

[Sommer Leigh]

I've been hesitant to comment much on this thread because I'm afraid of sounding like I'm sticking my nose up at the channelers (I'm not! I swear!) but in the spirit of honesty I do remember spending time in my writing classes in college eye rolling at the "I am a true student of artistry! My muse speaks to me! I am but a vessel for my characters!" Arguably it was mostly because creative writing college students seem to be incredibly dramatic, giving those theater nerds a run for their money, but also because I just didn't understand it and could never relate.

I've never felt like the story was flowing through me. I've never felt like it was a spiritual journey. I've never felt like anyone was speaking to me. And I guess I've always thought, hey, I'm the one putting in all the work. No one is getting credit for this baby but me. Maybe my inability to touch the spiritual is because I'm maybe a little bit vain? Until this thread I honestly hadn't given it much thought as a vehicle for the writing experience, but judging but the comments I think there is definitely something to it and not in the melodramatic creative writing major way either.

Here's what I came up when I started to really think about it. I don't know where the ideas for what I write come from, but I do know where the writing and the structure come in at, and for me it isn't from a muse. I read a lot of books and I watch a lot of movies. I watch good story based television shows and I read a lot of comics. I even play a lot of story based video games. I think experience with other storytelling helps me "feel out" the unraveling. Maybe I'm way off base, but this is how it feels when I write.

I feel like identifying good storytelling, good structure, and when things don't make sense is almost instinctive because in general, all storytelling is very similar. The cadence of the unraveling of the story is familiar enough that I know how it should come out when I'm writing. I'm both a planner and a pantser, but even when I'm pantsing my draft, there's still this rhythm to the storytelling that I can feel and when the cadence is off or missing entirely, I can use it to trace back to my problem.

It is why I am a slow writer - I edit as I write because I'm not comfortable writing when the rhythm is off, when a reveal has happened too soon or too late, when a character hasn't evolved despite these moments that naturally would evolve a person, etc.

Does that make any sense? I don't know, it sounded a lot smarter in my head before I started actually writing about it. :-) I like what Margo said about how evenly distributed we all are. I think it is fascinating to really try to understand how other people do it. When you're only familiar with your own way, it is easy to forget your way isn't the only way.

[Watcher55]

I gotta admit, I have no idea what Watcher55 said. :)

My first response was a bit tongue in cheek but for me the storytelling process is a lot like the old man whose grandson asks him how he whittles a stick into a horse. "The horse is already there," he answers. "I just have to slice off the parts that don't look like it."

We, all the people I am and those I interact with (including old dead people), already remember the story, I just have to slice off the memories that don't look like it. Memory's a tricky thing though. How often do you remember an event in order when you first recall it? I don't guess I ever have. The only parts of my story I've written in order are the bridge memories that harmonize the scattered memories I've already whittled out.

Here's the catch, I'm just like ever'body else. I like to embelish and, whether it's to protect myself or someone important to me, I often downplay the truth while trying to keep the lies to a minimum; and of course I flat forget things. That dog don't hunt. I can't let myself embelish upon or protect my characters and sometimes I have to bully myself into getting it right or scrapping the whole thing.

Now, here's the upshot. The story already exists in and around me; I procreated it. Now I have to whittle (channel) it.