Does Writing Make Your Head Weird?

There is something intoxicating about writing. I feel great elation if the words are all coming out in the right way, but I've never experienced fogginess after writing.

In fact, I think I experience the opposite. If I've really written something that flows well and makes good use of words, I find I'm sharper and more articulate afterwards. Writing is almost a cure for my fogginess.

It sounds an interesting phenomenon, Fish. The whole business of creativity and how you access it in the brain and what it does to you after you access it is deeply fascinating.

Hope it isn't unpleasant.

For me, stopping writing is a similar feeling to when I leave the cinema and am surprised to find it's still light outside.

Writing is self-stimulation, isn't it? A bit like lucid dreaming, a bit like juggling.

I find that it moves bit of me around inside, connecting things that weren't connected before. Doing it builds conduits between feelings and thoughts that weren't there before I started.

But it's definitely self-stimulation. You don't usually make your thoughts by an active process, but with writing you do.

No wonder you feel vague fish, you've just been engaged in an unusual process; stimulating yourself to a point where what happens inside you becomes real enough or coherent enough to be expressed directly in words.

Cheers,

Mark

My head is always weird. I rarely have heavy bouts of writing. When I do, I tend to emerge from them wearing ill-fitting clothing, and wandering aimlessly around the living room agape.

I know exaclty what you mean. I have to sit and breathe deeply for about 10 minutes to get back into the 'real' world after getting heavily into writing. I used to have the same experience after a maths exam. It's about being totally focussed on something almost other-worldly. I love the feeling - it's one of the best things about writing.

And I always thought it was having a weird head that made me want to write.

I've never experienced the 'weird head' feeling you guys relate to writing. Perhaps I'm not writing from the heart.

I can't say that my head has ever felt odd either before or after writing something. Sounds like a very personal thing to me. I write mostly in the morning. The reason is that I wake up feeling as though my head is full of words and that I must get them onto my screen. I can see the subject about which I want to write very clearly and feel as though I am actually there in the story I am writing...or trying to, and can see and feel all that is going on. When I have finished writing whatever it is, I feel as though my head is now emptied of words. That feels very exhilarating but I have never yet written anything that I felt accurately recorded all I could see in my imagination. So although I have writen quite a lot of stuff I can't say that I've ever been entirely happy with what I have written.....Still I'll keep trying.

In 'On Becoming a Novelist', John Gardner talks at length about the trancelike state of writing. He calls it 'the fictive dream':
"In the writing state - the state of inspiration - the fictive dream springs up fully alive: the writer forgets the words he has written on the page and sees, instead, his characters moving around their rooms, hunting through cupboards, glancing irritably through their mail, setting mousetraps, loading pistols. The dream is as alive and compelling as one's dreams at night.... Every writer has experienced at least moments of this strange, magical state. Reading student fiction, one can spot at once where the power turns on and where it turns off, where the writer wrote from "inspiration", or deep, flowing vision, and where he had to struggle along on mere intellect." Maybe it's that 'switching off of the intellect whilst still conscious' that is so disorienting.
Gardner adds:
"This and nothing else is the desperately sought and tragically fragile writer's process."

I actually feel refreshed and cleansed after writing, which might draw into question why I don't do it more often. I would much rather live in a world of my own creation for a while than in what I often laughingly refer to as the "so-called read world."

"You don't need the light of the Lord to read the handwriting on the wall." Copies of Warsaw Tales available through www.new-ink.org

"Writing is self-stimulation, isn't it? A bit like lucid dreaming, a bit like juggling."

Or like w*nking?

Am not picking on you markbrown - just the self-frottering tone of this thread.

Writing is an act of creative spurting... yes, Dr J, w*nking! (presuming the "*" is an "a" and not an "i"...)

pe
ps
oid

... What is "The Art of Tea"? ...
(www.pepsoid.wordpress.com)

To take the subect back to its origin... :)

For me, when emerging from an intense and productive writing session, it's like waking up. I don't feel refreshed, just like I've had an amazing technicolour dream. When I reach this state, I find the produced writing needs far less editing. It's when writing is work that I make loads of mistakes.

What the fuck is frottering? It sounds like some sort of sexual self-abuse so want to do it and do it properly. I have lucid dreams where my eyes are half open and I can see the room but the dream carries on. Very odd.

I get that...if you can see the room but can't move it's probably an episode of sleep paralysis which is closely linked to lucid dreaming.

jude

"Cacoethes scribendi"
http://www.judesworld.net

Whenever I write I usually take a few minutes staring blankly at my laptop screen when it suddenly pours out. It feels pretty amazing to be quite honest. BTW, I'm Frank. (New here...)

interesting stuff ...

this bit from alan benefit's post:

"characters moving around their rooms, hunting through cupboards, glancing irritably through their mail, setting mousetraps, loading pistols"

is exactly how it is for me ... i do just see them and describe what they are doing ... but i also have an internal viewpoint on the characters at the same time as well ... it's difficult to describe and i have never thought about it clearly before ...

this is why plotting is a completely different activity - and a necessary one - because while characters might behave as themselves in my head they don't plot themselves ...

Nope. Don't get this at all. Sorry.

From the sounds of it, it's got nothing to do with writing and everything to do with the way you apply yourself to a task.

"Or like w*nking?

Am not picking on you markbrown - just the self-frottering tone of this thread."

I wasn't unaware of the self-stimulation / masturbation interface.

It was why I chose the words 'self' and 'stimulation' on purpose.

Cheers,

Mark

I dunno. When I write it seems to me like the characters act on their own and I'm just recording what they do. Like writing a screenplay AFTER you've seen the movie.

Weird head weird head weird head!!!!!!!!!!