Creator or Channel of Creation

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Margo
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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by Margo » November 29th, 2010, 2:04 pm

Sommer Leigh wrote: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!)...
Yeah, it goes both ways. It's been exceedingly nice how little of that has leaked into this thread.
Sommer Leigh wrote: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.
LOL. I swear you must have been in my classes. That was me you were laughing at. Where were you sitting? :P
Sommer Leigh wrote: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.
I'm a little different in that there is a large spiritual journey aspect for me, even without the external muse. Perhaps I should say it just isn't a guided journey. :) More of a compass, a canteen, and a kick out the door.
Sommer Leigh wrote:Maybe my inability to touch the spiritual is because I'm maybe a little bit vain?
Nah, I'm way more vain than you, just by virtue of being born a leo. Then there's the cultivated vanity. ;P
Sommer Leigh wrote: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.
I blogged today about my feeling that it's useful to see how other people work. It might break us out of restrictive ideas about how we have to work. Maybe we don't have to work the way we think we do. Maybe we can experiment with other ways. Maybe some of them are better for us, and maybe they aren't.

Then, it's also nice to hear someone describe methods very like our own. There's that little bit of recognition, of kinship. So far my methods are very like yours and very like polymath's, differences in terminology aside. I do suspect I'm considerably less literary than I'm imagining polymath to be, but that's not really about process. That would be more voice and style.
Urban fantasy, epic fantasy, and hot Norse elves. http://margolerwill.blogspot.com/

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polymath
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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by polymath » November 29th, 2010, 2:11 pm

I've seen my share of participation mystiques where a writer credits external influences of a supernatural nature. I don't buy it. External influences, yes, from existence. A signal doesn't need to be consciously signified to have an influential impact. In fact, the less conscious a signal is signified the more likely it is to be influential. Full realization of a signal's significance leads to control of the signal. Otherwise, a subject wound perpetuates, where a signal isn't getting through and identity is malformed. Suturing closes the gap between signifier and signified.

For example a color modifier term like blue.

Nuncia felt blue. What does she feels blue mean? Color mood might indicate a clarity of thought processes, a desire for sky blue beaches and open air. Blue could mean depressed, cold, low blood oxygenation, at least. A subject wound comes from lack of clarity about Nuncia feeling blue. Context could suture the wound or the sentence could provide more detail and suture that way.

In a sense, the meanings of creator and channeler vary because of subject wounds, not so much because they have multiple connotations as because what they privately mean to any one individual varies and focuses on discrete connotations rather than realizing the whole. I'm inclined toward figuring out why subject wounds arise and how to suture the gaps. In the case of creator and channeler, I believe subject wounds occur because of false attribution to external causes and misattribution of internal causes and overlooking a synthesis of both causes. Suturing the gap means encompassing the gamut and owning a full realization of the whole and the parts.
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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by Margo » November 29th, 2010, 2:23 pm

Watcher55 wrote:We, all the people I am and those I interact with (including old dead people), already remember the story...
That's an interesting concept that recalls for me certain old Norse beliefs. Then again, right now, everything reminds me of some old Norse belief or practice or attitude. The dangers of research...
Watcher55 wrote: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.
Hmm, sounds sort of channeler-ish, if only because I can't imagine a creator saying they can't let themselves embellish something. That implies a true form exists to be embellished. Still, what you describe doesn't sound entirely like the platonic idea of all things having a perfect form.
Watcher55 wrote:Now, here's the upshot. The story already exists in and around me; I procreated it. Now I have to whittle (channel) it.
Yeah, if I had ta, I'd guesstimate your process falls somewhere between middle and channeler. Another sorta hybrid. Maybe. Kinda. I think.

What's your genre?
Urban fantasy, epic fantasy, and hot Norse elves. http://margolerwill.blogspot.com/

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Quill
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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by Quill » November 29th, 2010, 2:31 pm

I seek to be in the zone with every word I write, short of my shopping lists. That means from the first draft through the last, and whether I am in "creative" mode or outlining mode or am strapped into my editing chair for Mach 4 nitpicking.

How we define "in the zone" may vary among us. How I define it is channeling. Channeling what is a question that can be discussed. Probably more speculated upon. Doesn't really matter to me. I know when I am there. Nothing supernatural about it, I don't think, anymore than Michael Jordan had Zeus lifting him up for all his basketball shots, or Dustin Hoffman having the Devil deal him his acting chops.

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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by Margo » November 29th, 2010, 2:32 pm

polymath wrote:Suturing the gap means encompassing the gamut and owning a full realization of the whole and the parts.
Four words, polymath: less deep on Mondays.

Just kidding. Mostly. :)

Or maybe just less deep on Mondays after a 5-day holiday weekend.

Or maybe we should have theme Mondays aimed at not popping any brain cells. Something like "only words you'd hear in the film Deliverance" Monday. Or "Sesame Street" Monday. Or "no words of more than two syllables" Monday. :)

The Deliverance one is my favorite.
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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by polymath » November 29th, 2010, 2:52 pm

I'm holding back, Margo.

Not sandbagging, no, not calculating a trump flush Monday over the weekend to sweep trump points aside, more prospecting for deeper engagement on writing topics passionate and near and dear to me. I'm running out of hope I may one day find my literary life mate. So I'm ramping up out of forelorn desparation. The end of public polymath is in sight. Private polymath yearns for the companionship of novel writing fitting my life goals.
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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by Watcher55 » November 29th, 2010, 3:08 pm

You nailed it,
Margo wrote:Maybe. Kinda. I think.
If, that is, we can agree that the "muse" in my case is more of a metaphysical phenom than it is some mystical personality. To put it in terms of Rock n Roll - I'm more "Ghost in the Machine" than I am "Spirit in the sky".

I write historical sci-fi with obvious Christian undertones.

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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by Margo » November 29th, 2010, 3:13 pm

polymath wrote:I'm holding back, Margo.
Oh dear. I was afraid of that.
polymath wrote:Not sandbagging, no, not calculating a trump flush Monday over the weekend to sweep trump points aside, more prospecting for deeper engagement on writing topics passionate and near and dear to me. I'm running out of hope I may one day find my literary life mate. So I'm ramping up out of forelorn desparation. The end of public polymath is in sight. Private polymath yearns for the companionship of novel writing fitting my life goals.
Do I understand you to mean, polymath, that you wish you could find another writer capable of discussing the more profound topics of writing at the same level you are?
Urban fantasy, epic fantasy, and hot Norse elves. http://margolerwill.blogspot.com/

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polymath
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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by polymath » November 29th, 2010, 3:19 pm

No, one on any level I'm able to find mutually companionable for both our poet's journeys sakes.
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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by Margo » November 29th, 2010, 4:35 pm

polymath wrote:No, one on any level...
That's a plus. Otherwise I suspect you'd have had to look at mining an MFA program. And not just any MFA program.
polymath wrote:...I'm able to find mutually companionable...
Hmm, that could be tricky. Sounds like a personality thingy, to be technical. I do too have a psycho-ology degree.
polymath wrote:...for both our poet's journeys sakes.
Hmph. I'd walk with you, but I'm on the fool's journey. They promised a boxed lunch.

Kidding aside, there's quite a few of us meandering about this place. Surely one of us would do, at least in a pinch. :) Tag someone who vaguely resembles what you're looking for and engage him/her directly. As important as solitude is to writing, I'd hate to lose the public polymath, for your sake as well as ours.
Urban fantasy, epic fantasy, and hot Norse elves. http://margolerwill.blogspot.com/

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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by Steppe » November 29th, 2010, 5:49 pm

OK great topic.

I'll throw down a shiny penny.

I lived many exciting stories.
Now I must write them and send them inward backward to pay the rent for having lived in paradise.
Time, space, people, words, governments, religion, sciences, food, eating and breathing can never compare
to breaching the border between the finite and infinite and being allowed to stay briefly and (as)forever in that
pure silent contemplation of nothing as the ultimate truth of all things. There is only thought and action forever.


I think Margo said they hoped their characters "weren't all other versions of self"
I'm the opposite in that I know I can never escape my role as the narrator and I use a hard hell exterior
to maintain a soft squishy center that truly wishes i could get away with loving everyone and everything forever.

To write is to boldly declare; "I am the dreamer and this is the dreamed."

I know writing does that for me.
It gives me absolute freedom married to absolute responsibility.
My four great loves in life in order were; sail racing, hockey, music composition and writing.
My eternal love is the friends who follow me from world to world to protect me from myself.

I write the stories that must be written.
Whether they are read or not is of no concern because I don't want for money.

Think about all it takes before the words came pouring out.
Tens of thousands of days and millions sensory intoxication with four billion years of earths multitude of varieties.

Why?

Because the universe is very lonely.
The infinite being is far lonelier still.
So I write to amuse them and tell everyone's most cherished secrets in the process.
I believe in the craft of writing so as to attain higher and higher levels of artistic expression.

In the beginning their was god and the word and they were one
So the word went forth and there was a stirring upon the waters.

Now that's sums up the art of writing.
Paying the rent by sending it back with "loads of interest(love)" to the lonely universe and one infinite silent one.
A way of sincerely saying "thank you for allowing me to exist and for allowing me to know that you exist and know that I exist."


Can I get an amen brothers and sisters...

:-)

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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by sierramcconnell » November 29th, 2010, 6:06 pm

Heh. Sometimes I wonder, when I'm "playing pretend" with the characters that muse me, how much of it is pretend when I feel them standing next to me, whispering in my ear, following me on the call center floor, tugging on my hand and looking up at me with those bright eyes as if they need me. Please don't leave me. Don't forget my story.

Some of them are children. Some are adults. Some need extra emotional support, others need to be left alone though I swear when I tease them I see a smile peeking there on those usually downturned lips.

It's almost like a haunted home, but the spirits are muses, and they're inhabiting the bodies of the dolls I've bought for them, sometimes sneaking out to follow me, sometimes -if they haven't quite gotten a body yet- just hanging around waiting for one.

Like a family that I've made or found.

I said once I tended to attract things. Even when I was little I would make up stories and I see it now with Mary. My sister gets worried about it because Mary will come up with random names and stories and even go a little dark like, "Uh oh, Summer died."

I asked her this weekend, "Mary, who's Summer?"

"Summer's a faery."

"Oh good," my sister said, "I thought she was a ghost."

Well, she said she was a faery, she never said she was an imaginary\television character faery. XD
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The blog died...but so did I...and now I'm alive again! OMG.

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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by Sommer Leigh » November 29th, 2010, 6:28 pm

Margo wrote:
LOL. I swear you must have been in my classes. That was me you were laughing at. Where were you sitting? :P
In the second seat in the row, either just to the left or right of the middle. I liked being close to the front so I got called on a lot, but cooler than those front row nerds who desperately wanted the professor's attention. I wanted to be "cool" smart. :-) Too cool for the first row, too awesome for the back.
Margo wrote:Nah, I'm way more vain than you, just by virtue of being born a leo. Then there's the cultivated vanity. ;P
I'm a Leo too! Now I see why I relate to you so well.
Margo wrote:I blogged today about my feeling that it's useful to see how other people work. It might break us out of restrictive ideas about how we have to work. Maybe we don't have to work the way we think we do. Maybe we can experiment with other ways. Maybe some of them are better for us, and maybe they aren't.
I like the idea of experimenting with other people's ways. Imagine tapping into a whole other side of yourself you didn't know existed because you never allowed for the possibility of another way. I'm not quite sure I'd even know how to start. I've never really talked to people before about their "process" but I am curious about what it feels like to channel the story or to reach out into this spiritual ether and receive ideas and emotions like an artistic radio station. I'm kind of dazzled by the idea. By what I'm reading these stories have a sense of purpose to them...like the writers were meant to write what they are writing. I kind of love that idea, I've just never felt it.
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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by polymath » November 29th, 2010, 6:41 pm

Margo wrote:Otherwise I suspect you'd have had to look at mining an MFA program. And not just any MFA program.
Actually, an MA English creative writing program is in the cards for next fall. I'm ramping up to application as we speak. It doesn't matter to me where, so long as I come away with the diploma. Meanwhile, do they have a world of polymath upcoming. And I'm the type of student who doesn't ride on laurels. I'll get what I put into it out of it.
Margo wrote:Hmm, that could be tricky. Sounds like a personality thingy, to be technical. I do too have a psycho-ology degree.
Yeah, it is a personality thing. Difficulty forming meaningful, enduring personal relationships. Undiagnosed unspecified personality dysfunction. Partly because of so many failed relationships due to flighty, fickle, self-gratification seeking, emotionally indifferent acquaintance selections. Partly because I've got a slow committment process from feeling trapped by untimely committment. Mostly because I have an irrational fear of human beings.
Margo wrote:Hmph. I'd walk with you, but I'm on the fool's journey. They promised a boxed lunch.
They promised me nothing. So far they've amply fulfilled their promises.
Margo wrote:Kidding aside, there's quite a few of us meandering about this place. Surely one of us would do, at least in a pinch. :) Tag someone who vaguely resembles what you're looking for and engage him/her directly. As important as solitude is to writing, I'd hate to lose the public polymath, for your sake as well as ours.
I've tested the waters, made several subtle overtures. No joy yet. I'm not done yet, several more months to go to MA joy.
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Re: Creator or Channel of Creation

Post by Margo » November 29th, 2010, 7:06 pm

Steppe wrote:Can I get an amen brothers and sisters...
Hmmm, reminiscent of the Egyptian creation myths. I like it.
Sommer Leigh wrote:I'm a Leo too! Now I see why I relate to you so well.
Really??? They let TWO of us onto the same forum? Brave, brave Nathan.
polymath wrote:I've tested the waters, made several subtle overtures. No joy yet. I'm not done yet, several more months to go to MA joy.
Boo subtle. Speaking personally, I don't do subtle, mostly because it can lead to misinterpretation and hurt feelings later. In my earlier years I was forever reading into what people said, and I was crushed the few times I was wrong. As I got older, I refused to read into anything, and accidentally hurt feelings because I didn't assume that things meant more than they did on their face. Subtle is one heck of a lot more trouble than it's worth, from both ends of it. I don't imagine anyone would be taken aback if you laid it out plain and simple.

My god, I just can't stop it. I've been in therapist mode all freaking day, doling out uninvited advice everywhere I go. I even kept my ex-husband on the phone for 30 minutes trying to make him talk about his coping mechanisms. WTH?
Urban fantasy, epic fantasy, and hot Norse elves. http://margolerwill.blogspot.com/

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