How to Create Conscious Creativity
I’m a rabid organizer: I outline my stories in such depth that the outline could almost be considered my first draft; I run my characters through an intricate “interview process”; and I edit methodically, piece by piece, sentence by sentence. I feel very strongly that this method is the best I could possibly utilize for myself. I am not someone who can sit down at the computer with a half-formed idea, type the first sentence, and then wing my way to the closing chapter. I have to know where I’m going and how I’m getting there. And I feel that my stories are much the better for my following this method.
How to Create Subconscious “Dreaming” Creativity
A few Christmases ago, someone gave me Robert Olen Butler’s book From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction (affiliate link), and last month I finally got around to reading it. I squirmed a little through the introduction and the first chapter. When Butler wrote things like “Please get out of the habit of saying that you’ve got an idea for a short story. Art does not come from ideas. Art does not come from the mind. Art comes from the place where you dream. Art comes from your unconscious; it comes from the white-hot center of you,” I rolled my eyes and thought, Oh boy, here comes the useless touchy-feely stuff. But as I read further, some of Butler’s ideas intrigued me.
In Chapter 5: “A Writer Prepares,” Butler talked about “dreamstorming” your story, about letting images and characters well up from your unconscious. He recommended that writers collect hundreds of these little idea snippets before sitting down to write. As it turns out, this is already exactly what I do.
After their initial conception, most of my stories sit around in the back of my mind for years. I don’t often deliberately “dreamstorm” them as Butler suggests, but ideas will well up out of nowhere and add themselves to the mental panorama I am forming for a given story. When, finally, I am ready to write, I’ll sit down and organize all these random scenes into a brief and sketchy outline.
Why Subconscious Creativity Is the Best Kind
Now, here’s the interesting part: the best parts of my stories are almost always the subconscious parts—the scenes I’ve dreamt up out of nowhere.
Butler’s theory does allow for “thinking” in the second draft, in the rewriting. It’s just the original concepts that must be unconscious. He even allows for outlining to the extent that he organizes his collection of scenes and images into a cohesive and linear whole. He’s not a stream-of-conscious proponent, which was one of things I feared when I started the book. He just demands that the idea (although he wouldn’t use that term) flow from the unconscious without initially being checked or directed by the writer’s conscious, thinking mind. Taken in small part and non-exclusively, it’s a brilliant approach.
In Koine Greek, it is impossible to say “I think,” because no active form of the verb exists. Instead, one is forced to say, “The thought occurred to me.” As Sharlee Foster, one of my earliest writing mentors, put it:
We ourselves do not think, but rather thoughts are given to us.
Although all stories need the eventual guidance of an objective and analytic design plan, most authors find that their greatest and most original ideas must be filtered through the labyrinth of unconscious creativity.
I don’t agree with all of Butler’s opinions (especially his adamant claim that anything created “consciously” is hackneyed dreck), but his book presented an enormously vital and valid point. The best of writing—indeed, the best of all art—is a gift. Most artists would be the first to admit that their genius is beyond even them. It comes from someplace outside the conscious realm… it comes from where we dream. Once we recognize and accept that fact, we are then able to take advantage of the tremendous opportunity of harnessing our unconscious minds. The two sides of our creativity—the conscious and the subconscious—working in harmony, the one pulsing and pounding ahead, the other slowing and refining, are capable of producing great things.
Tell me your opinion: Which you think it is more powerful–conscious or subconscious creativity?
