Springs’s thread about what we would like to write has set off a train of thought. The series I’m currently working on is quite different from the novel I said I most wanted to write, and from the couple of past novels drawn from the same source. Briefly, those ones feel as though they definitely come from me, whereas the current series doesn’t so much. Sometimes I feel that my current one could almost have been written by a different person — which raises the thought that perhaps it would be better if it were.
I’m not talking about an actual physically different person, but a different authorial persona. Maybe the difficulty I’ve sometimes had progressing with the series is that I try to write it with the same self as my former work (the stuff that more obviously, to me, comes from deeper down), when the two aren’t perfectly compatible.
I remember reading in a book by Colin Wilson how he was once trapped in a hotel room by Dino de Laurentis and instructed to revise a film script. Finding he didn't have time to do the work himself, he handed it over to part of his subconscious, to whom he even gave a name, Gerald or something. Gerald did the revisions far more effectively and efficiently than Wilson himself could have done. I’ve also read about a crime writer who could work on two different books (from different series) at once, but only by using different desks and computers. Maybe both these are examples of authors adopting a different ‘self’ to get their work done, and at a more fundamental level than getting into the mindset of a particular character POV.
Does anyone here consciously do this, or know of other examples? As an exercise, I’ve been trying to imagine the kind of person I might have imagined writing my current book if I’d read it with no prior knowledge: what he (or even she) would wear, what they would drive, how they would live, and I’ve found it quite interesting. Whether trying to assume such a self would allow the writing to flow more easily, I've no idea yet.
(Before anyone else says it, I realise, of course, that this could all just be a more than usually inventive way of procrastinating.)
I’m not talking about an actual physically different person, but a different authorial persona. Maybe the difficulty I’ve sometimes had progressing with the series is that I try to write it with the same self as my former work (the stuff that more obviously, to me, comes from deeper down), when the two aren’t perfectly compatible.
I remember reading in a book by Colin Wilson how he was once trapped in a hotel room by Dino de Laurentis and instructed to revise a film script. Finding he didn't have time to do the work himself, he handed it over to part of his subconscious, to whom he even gave a name, Gerald or something. Gerald did the revisions far more effectively and efficiently than Wilson himself could have done. I’ve also read about a crime writer who could work on two different books (from different series) at once, but only by using different desks and computers. Maybe both these are examples of authors adopting a different ‘self’ to get their work done, and at a more fundamental level than getting into the mindset of a particular character POV.
Does anyone here consciously do this, or know of other examples? As an exercise, I’ve been trying to imagine the kind of person I might have imagined writing my current book if I’d read it with no prior knowledge: what he (or even she) would wear, what they would drive, how they would live, and I’ve found it quite interesting. Whether trying to assume such a self would allow the writing to flow more easily, I've no idea yet.
(Before anyone else says it, I realise, of course, that this could all just be a more than usually inventive way of procrastinating.)
