Automatic Writing

I said it at the beginning and I’ll say it again: writers are born, not made.

No one can teach you to write, not even a writer like myself. At best I can suggest ways of channelling your creativity. As a writer you write because you’re driven to write, just as a musician must make music. Both are a means of self-expression.

Art or Skill?

Keeping with the music theme, I’ll remind you again of the girl I met in Holland who played superb piano. She was nearly 17 and her parents were immensely proud of her. We were treated to her rendition of one of Liszt’s sonatas, a very difficult piece to play.

But the girl’s playing, while incredibly confident, lacked soul. I felt she was treating the piano keys as a typist would work a keyboard. She’d practised for days if not weeks to get it right. A real musician when playing from the heart can make me weep with emotion. This is art.

When something is written from the heart I believe it shows too. And your reader will remember it for a long time to come.

Writing skills can be taught. These are the nuts and bolts of language: the rules if you like. Anybody can learn them and apply them. But the real writer uses more than mere skill.

Your subconscious

A teacher of mine used to give people the following advice. When you sit down to an exam paper, he said, read all the questions before you begin. Don’t simply answer the easy ones first.

He was right. He knew that the subconscious mind is one of the greatest tools an author has. He meant that when you’d finished reading through the examination questions, your subconscious would immediately start working on them. Meaning that by the time you reached the most difficult questions, a part of your brain had already figured them out – to an extent of course.

Your subconscious is a hidden ally. You can compare it to the iceberg pictured: the parts you don't see are what keep the iceberg afloat.

You can apply this principle using “automatic writing”. Say you’re suffering from the dreaded writer’s block and you’re staring at a blank screen or a blank page. Start writing! It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, as long as you keep up a flow of words.

Nine times out of ten you’ll find that new ideas will come to you during the automatic writing. Your subconscious will have been working on the story. And it will surprise you.

Here’s what happened to me recently with my own writing. I’m working on a paranormal novel with a highly complex plot. Some months ago I introduced two manor houses, one built of light-coloured bricks, the other black. My heroine visits one of the houses by moonlight and sees it reflected in a dark lake. I didn’t know at the time what this meant; it simply came to me and I liked the idea.

Last week I had my heroine find a spread of tarot cards. She sees that the final card is the one called The Moon. It shows a black tower and a white tower with the moon between them, and there’s a dark lake in the foreground.

At last I understood why my subconscious suggested those things to me. It all made sense and helped the plot along. Amazing.