Take Five: #7 of 30: Creative geography



Take Five
Five-minute reads about writing
Nov. 3 - Nov. 30, 2010

Courtesy: Sasha Soren (Random Magic)
Twitter: @RandomMagicTour

#7 of 30: Creative geography


There's a certain border -- or threshold -- that you cross, when you start moving from conscious thought about how you’re writing some particular scene, to where you’re seeing it so vividly in your head that you become almost just an onlooker, transcribing something you see. 

The only difficulty is that it’s hard to reach that place, and the way there isn’t always the same path.

There's a place, but not a geographical place; it’s a certain state of consciousness, somewhere between being fully awake and fully asleep. Having waking dreams, let’s say.

It’s very hard to describe, because it’s a state of consciousness, and, so, not easy to just show you a photograph and say, “Here, this is what I mean.” 


But if you love music, then it’s that point in time when you start to hear the music as part of your own heartbeat.

Or, if you love film, it’s where you gasp out loud or hold your breath, because your emotions are genuinely engaged in this shadow story flickering in front of your eyes.

Or, if you love reading, it’s the point where you lose track of time, and forget that you’re reading ink on a page in some particular set of characters, and can hear the character’s voices inside your head, or get a chill reading some tense scene, or laugh out loud to yourself and startle your company, and so on.

It’s that particular place. That’s where the stories come from.


From author interview with Sasha Soren.
Interviewer: The Bookette (@the_bookette)


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