In the Dreamtime...

It all started with a dream…

Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, as most of us fans know by now, got started with a dream.  She clearly saw Edward and Bella in a sunlit meadow.  She heard them discussing the problems inherent to their unique relationship.  

It’s all in the dream.  It’s the theater of the subconscious.  

Creativity lives and breathes here, in the subconscious mind, which is free, limitless, and full of symbols that sometimes interact in very strange ways.  The writer, the artist, is the person who allows these symbols to emerge, to take control, even, with no concern for the dictates of the conscious mind.  One lets go, one goes with the flow, allowing oneself to be carried by the stream of images, words, feelings, music – whatever it is that moves the artist.  One lets go.  This is the most important point.  One ignores the critic, the censor.  One allows characters, words, pictures, or whatever it is, to emerge.  Unfettered.  Flowing.  Incandescent. Glowing.  Sparkling. 

How very difficult this is at times!  ‘Reality’ intrudes.  Routines, rules, and regulations must be followed.  One must get to work on time.  Bills have to be paid.  Babies cry for their bottles, and husbands for their dinner.  (Even those of us women who don’t have kids, like me, still have the husbands to deal with.  But mine is very sweetly content to eat out most of the time, or we buy microwave dinners. ) 

There are all kinds of inane, trivial, inconsequential things that can mess up one’s creative juices.  So one has to set aside whatever time one can, in order to allow the subconscious to possess one’s body, so that it can dance, and flow, and give forth inspiration, and thus comes the book, the painting, the movie, the piano concerto, or the elegant, swan-like movements of a ballet choreography….

It all begins with the dream.  It all begins with allowing the dream to live, taking the place of this mundane ‘reality’ we think is real.  The secret is that it’s not.  What we know as 'reality' is made up of the consensus of the majority.  It’s the paradigm created by the majority.  So we believe in it, and live by it. 

Art and creativity are not the consensus of the majority.  They are the special preserve of those who are willing to break away from the majority, by allowing the subconscious mind free play.

More and more, I want to free myself from this oppressive thing we humans call ‘reality’.  More and more, I want to simply allow my subconscious mind to have its way with me.  This is what it’s doing right now.  I have stepped aside, and the words are thus free to flow from within, with no restraint, no obligations to be anything but what they are.

It’s a little like receiving dictation.  I’m dictating to myself, except that I am not consciously attempting to control the words that are coming out.  

It all started with the dream…  It always does.

I want to dream and dream and dream and dance in the light of my dreams which will then become my new reality….

Transcription complete.

A writer's work is never done....

I am definitely exhausted at the moment.  It’s now 6:15 PM here in Miami.  I’ve been at it since I got up, at exactly 1:08 PM… Oh, yeah, I like to pull my late nights on weekends, and then get up late, too.  Not that I go out clubbing or anything.  My late nights are spent on reading, mostly, or browsing on the Internet.  I try to combine both. 

Since Friday, I’ve been obsessively busy with this one Twilight-inspired story, “It Happened That Night”.  I originally posted it on fanfiction.net, a couple of years ago.  It was the last story I posted on that site, and I had not been back since.  I guess I got hung up on whether or not I got a lot of reviews.   I know I shouldn’t be, but when I see that any of my stories is not getting reviews, well, I can’t help but feel bad…

Suddenly, out of the blue, my subconscious mind decided to tinker with it again. And tinker I did!!  I’ve only stopped now.  I think the story is finally the way I want it to be.  It does feel complete now.

I wrote an entirely new section for it, and revised and revised and revised it until I had it just ‘right’.  Then I went back into the older section of the story, and revised some parts of it, as well.  

I deleted my original story from ff.net, and posted the new and improved version, with the title “Saturday Night in Port Angeles”.  I hoped no one would remember the previous story, but I couldn't risk it.  With a new title, it would surely stand a chance to be read, I thought.

I’m very much a perfectionist when it comes to writing.  And I’ve always heard it said, by writers with many books in their resumes, that one should do a lot of revising. One should be willing to toss out the most incredibly beautiful sentences, if they’re not contributing anything meaningful to the story, not advancing the plot, or telling the reader anything about a  character that they didn’t already know.

This is why writing is so time-consuming, and downright hard work.  This is also what makes it such a daunting undertaking.  But you know what?  The more you do it, the more passionate you get about it.  The more you lose your fear of the writing process itself.  

When you first put fingers to the keyboard ( occasionally I do put pen to paper, as I did before my computer geek husband got me a laptop), you feel stiff, unsure, even intimidated.  The important thing, though, is to start.  Once you get going, sometimes you can’t seem to stop!  (Like now, for instance, lol.)

So you start writing, timidly at first, and then, you’re suddenly on a roll, and the words just seem to write themselves on the page, and before you know it, you look up, and the sun is setting, or your spouse asks you a question which you answer with a moronic ‘huh?’

It’s now 6:38 PM, and I am calling it quits for today, “today” being the operative word, of course.  Lol!

Thoughts on reading "Twilight" for the third time...

Rain falls softly in my mind… I am Bella Swan, sitting on my bed, writing down my thoughts of Edward Cullen in my private diary.  

Dragging a hand through my tangled hair, I sigh, and stop my writing momentarily.  I stare out my window, which is partially closed, letting in a gentle breeze.  Rivulets of rain flow in crisscrossing patterns down the windowpanes, but I stare past them, into the thick darkness of the night.

What and who is Edward Cullen?  What mystery beckons to me as I bring a picture of his hypnotically beautiful face to my memory?

My mind returns me to my own identity.  The second-story bedroom in Forks fades into the pages of the book I’m holding in my hands, and I am forced to face myself.  I am Mari.  I am not Bella, although I do identify very strongly with her.  It’s easy to see why.  She doesn’t quite fit in, somehow, although she’s made friends at Forks High School easily enough.  Yet none of them know the real Isabella Swan.  No one, that is, except Edward.  In the short time he has interacted with her at school, he has seen her true essence.

This is the nature of true love, isn’t it?  That we are known for who we truly are.  That someone else in this world is as comfortable in our inner landscape, although they don’t quite share it, as we are.

I look back down at the pages of my book, and feel the pull of the story, dragging me into it, into Bella’s world.  Into Edward’s world.

I become lost once again in the dream that is “Twilight”…