Talking to yourself

In a previous post I wrote about how I approach writing as a project.  There was another motivation that I often have which I never mentioned in that post, and that is quite simply curiosity.  As a writer you get to tell a story, but when you are sitting writing the story telling the reader what happens, you are present and you are following that time line that you are depicting without ever being fully conscious of where it is going.  It is very dangerous to take a story and plan out in your mind or on paper how it will play out in every detail before you even write it.  The reason this is dangerous is because you lose the curiosity of what happens next.  "I'm not going to read it, I know how it ends"

I like to write as much as I can and then leave my work for quite some time.  Part of the reason for this as I have mentioned before is so that I can proof read it and see my mistakes as the content fades in my mind sufficiently for me to actually have to read what I wrote and see what it says rather than what I think it says.  Another reason why I do this is because it allows me as a writer to experience my work as a reader.  When I return to something I haven't looked at in months or even years, I get to see how a reader would approach my work.  I get to see whether they can follow it on first reading, because if even I can't follow it when reading it and I am the one who wrote it, then you as the reader have no hope in Hell.

Curiosity therefore plays a major part in the creative process for me.  I don't like to plan things out in too much detail.  I document things as I go along for reference, I record little bits of ideas and future plot points but I only ever create a skeleton when planning, I leave the meat to be added later during the writing process.  I keep in mind a general direction of where I want a story to go and the narrative I want to create but I let the story tell itself.  This does lead to dialogue between characters that I feel is more organic.  Characters having conversations is one of the most interesting things about writing for me because when it comes down to it, you're really just talking to yourself.  You let two characters with distinct personalities have a conversation and you see different thought processes emerge, and you witness a conversation that at times can be very surprising.

Some pearls of wisdom I have discovered over the years have come from my writing, when characters that I have an affinity with talk to characters who challenge their point of view, this allows me to challenge my own point of view by extension, but in a way that is safer to process.  I get to displace the discomfort that I would normally feel in that situation onto the character I have an affinity with, this does lead to confrontations that play out arguments that I would never actually have with people in real life because in most situations I simply come to the conclusion that most people aren't worth the effort.  In my experience people rarely change their minds, and most people just like to hear themselves speak, the irony in writing these conversations however is that both sides are extensions of you the writer so you're really hearing yourself speak all the time through your work - which I openly admit is incredibly egotistical and maybe that will give you an idea of the kind of mentality most writers have.

One such example is a conversation between two characters in one of my fantasy novels, where one character that I had an affinity with was making excuses as to why they never did something they could have always done, and the other simply responded by saying that "the ease or difficulty of making a choice does not change the fact it is a choice" - this is something that struck a chord with me when I wrote it because it made me rather uncomfortable when I had to accept that although they may have been incredibly difficult paths to take, there were paths I could have taken.  If you had said this to me in person as someone else challenging my internal beliefs, your words would likely have fell on deaf ears.  You can consider my closed minded for saying that, but I would argue this is the way most people react.  This isn't about whether or not you are willing to listen to other people, listening in and of itself doesn't mean you have to agree, you just have to hear what they have to say, I would have heard those words but I wouldn't have accepted them said by anyone else, the fact that came from another part of me makes it much easier to accept.  This mentality has been something that has stayed with me ever since, I recognise now that there are many things I do have a choice over, I simply choose the easier option.

It's a strange thing to have a conversation with yourself, and there is a question I have which I can't answer - do other people do this?  I know that writers do, it's part of the job description, if you ever want to write a piece of work that incorporates more than one character you'll need to be able to have a conversation with yourself.  As for everyone else, I don't know what goes on inside your minds so I can't answer that question.  I do know that if you asked most people if they talk to themselves they'll look at you as if you're crazy, or as if you think they are crazy, that does make me wonder about whether or not you have to have certain mental predispositions to be able to become a writer.  There have certainly been many writers through history who struggled with mental health problems, that makes me wonder if writing is more than just an art or a craft, maybe it is an affliction.