Subconscious Thoughts

Back yonks ago there was a discussion about writer's block and the whole creative process. Well, I am reading Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. I will now confess I have never read any Greene before. You wonder how a woman with an English Lit degree from Mount Holyoke has not read Greene? The only thing I can say in my defence is that I had a concentration on Medieval Studies. I digress. I am now reading Greene because of Susan Hill's Creative Writing Course. She strongly suggested that we read at least one of his books. So Atonement has been put on hold.

I know you wonder where all this is going.......well we all spoke about block and the need to give the subconscious a chance to catch up. In Greene's Bendrix words:

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends.

There it all is explained so beautifully with just the right emphasis on shopping - don't you think?

Snowy is here and has a stinking cold. I think I will see if today it disappears with his jet lag otherwise it's a trip to the vets!

You will note on my side bar that I have started editing A Cornish House. I think I now have enough distance from it to begin the cutting and crafting. yesterday Cally asked me about my editing process when she noticed that August Rock has been through so many revisions. At this point in my writing I can't seem to focus on too many editing tasks - plot, pace, prose. So I do an edit for each one and makes notes for things that jump out at me. For example on the first 15 pages of ACH yesterday it was mostly language, but I can to a passage and I thought why the hell did I include that? What does it tell the reader? Does it serve any useful purpose other than increasing the word count? SO I highlighted it and left it on the hard copy. When it came to inputting my changes later in the day on the 'puter I cut that seen even though I was really focusing on the words that bit stuck out like a sore thumb and it had to go this edit.