This Many Steps To Crazy...
spurred by shovelheat
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
Shovelheat wrote an amazing kicker of a story hereLink
and it definitely got me thinking about a lot of things.
Firstly, just how far off is your average person from crazy? I'm not kidding when I say that I definitely question this on a regular basis at work. People fly off the handle in a heartbeat, and due to anger and frustration, people have screamed the most horrid and surprising things at me. What gets me, is that typically half of these calls start off being normal. The person sounds like your average, everyday sane being.... and by the end of the conversation I shake my head at what has just passed. Some people have litterally yelled at me at the top of their lungs, and have obviously slammed the phone down on me with such enormous force that I know they've broken yet another phone. I absolutely do not get people who just lose it like that. Where and who do they go home to after they're done with me?
Secondly, as a writer, I've had similar issues addressed. Certain blame and shame has resulted over the presentation of a new story. I hate showing my parents my stuff. My mother once hit me with a 'so this is what you write about?' and I was cringing. The mother in the story was not her, but how does any parent take their child's main character's parent in a story being painted as overbearing, scary, and mentally unsound? It's never a good scene, no matter what truth lies beneath.
As a writer, I give myself every opportunity to go wild. Murders often are drawn out step by step, and the most awful things happen to my child characters. How far am I from crazy by writing this stuff? How much sicker can I get?
I often relate dreams and writing to each other. Often, after completing a story or novel, I look back on it, at it's as if it wrote itself. Sometimes it's like I'm one of those Occultist/Mediums that do that automatic writing thing. You know, where the person sits in a chair with a pencil loose in hand who then opens their mind and the writing begins by some strange force/prescence? Really. I don't know how some of my stories get written.
I've heard it related to a massive brain dump. The subconscious just lets loose with the little daily things you think you weren't paying attention to. That's what those dreams of flailing at an intruder with a baseball bat is really all about. That smushy sound like a rotten honeydew melon falling on a tiled floor was just a brain dropping. Like horseshit after a parade. Writing is definitely a bit like dreaming. You can see things so clearly as you write, sometimes, when it gets really good, it's like you're right there.
Right on. That's exactly what I love about it all.
and it definitely got me thinking about a lot of things.
Firstly, just how far off is your average person from crazy? I'm not kidding when I say that I definitely question this on a regular basis at work. People fly off the handle in a heartbeat, and due to anger and frustration, people have screamed the most horrid and surprising things at me. What gets me, is that typically half of these calls start off being normal. The person sounds like your average, everyday sane being.... and by the end of the conversation I shake my head at what has just passed. Some people have litterally yelled at me at the top of their lungs, and have obviously slammed the phone down on me with such enormous force that I know they've broken yet another phone. I absolutely do not get people who just lose it like that. Where and who do they go home to after they're done with me?
Secondly, as a writer, I've had similar issues addressed. Certain blame and shame has resulted over the presentation of a new story. I hate showing my parents my stuff. My mother once hit me with a 'so this is what you write about?' and I was cringing. The mother in the story was not her, but how does any parent take their child's main character's parent in a story being painted as overbearing, scary, and mentally unsound? It's never a good scene, no matter what truth lies beneath.
As a writer, I give myself every opportunity to go wild. Murders often are drawn out step by step, and the most awful things happen to my child characters. How far am I from crazy by writing this stuff? How much sicker can I get?
I often relate dreams and writing to each other. Often, after completing a story or novel, I look back on it, at it's as if it wrote itself. Sometimes it's like I'm one of those Occultist/Mediums that do that automatic writing thing. You know, where the person sits in a chair with a pencil loose in hand who then opens their mind and the writing begins by some strange force/prescence? Really. I don't know how some of my stories get written.
I've heard it related to a massive brain dump. The subconscious just lets loose with the little daily things you think you weren't paying attention to. That's what those dreams of flailing at an intruder with a baseball bat is really all about. That smushy sound like a rotten honeydew melon falling on a tiled floor was just a brain dropping. Like horseshit after a parade. Writing is definitely a bit like dreaming. You can see things so clearly as you write, sometimes, when it gets really good, it's like you're right there.
Right on. That's exactly what I love about it all.
