Some writers claim that their hands have minds of their own when writing sometime of the day, say, at dawn. For some, it's amazing, and some of them grow out to be prolific writers whose work reflect poignant experiences concealed in characters that are in introspect, mirror images of themselves. In reality, the "mind" of the hand is actually the subconscious of the wielder of the pen, resurfacing and manifesting itself when all caution and censorship have let go. However, for me, it's just scary. To live a life full of caution that borders on paranoia, I have never really let some part of me go berserk-- i mean, out of control. When I write, everything is within my umbrella of consciousness, and I guess this is where I come to be problematic.
To lift the lid of the unconscious is essential in creative writing, for the very fact that the unconscious houses a whole universe of experiences that when exploited can lead to works like "The Tell Tale Heart" of Edgar Allan Poe, or even "Letters of St. Paul to the Corinthians." Different writers have different ways of lifting the lids of their unconscious. Edgar Allan Poe, the father of the english short story, writes when drunk. His famous short stories, like the Cask of Amontillado, even reflects his fondness of wine. Similarly, the writer Ernest Hemingway who wrote the short story " A Clean Well Lighted Place" (a phrase I utter everytime I'm asked where i want to eat) was a heavy drunkard, and even this short story of his was definitive of his neurosis which eventually drove him to suicide.
On a lighter note, some writers (not just writers but artists in general), drown themselves in coffee and then smokes. I know of one who even named his blog after the empty coffee cups that was the detritus of his artistic side, and an esteemed debater and writer of my school smokes a lot. The revelry of the experience is the closest they could to obtain the "high" that would allow themselves to let go of repression and let the inner artist take control. But then again there's drugs. Drugs, and this is not taboo, is popular also for some artists, who says the experience is irreplaceable and accept no substitutes. Artists who take this course though, oftentimes unwarily, or even warily (eerie!), leads themselves to self-destruction(think Kurt Cobain).
Liver cirrhosis aside, or worse, suicide (Oh the ignominy!), I realize that If I want to ace in writing I must find ways to access my subconscious. Right now, coffee solves the problem somehow. But I know for certain that there is only one reason why I cannot develop my writing to a deeper extent. It is because, tadaaa!, I'm too busy with struggling to graduate this year in an engineering course. When you're supposed to commit gluttony with living upon reaction rates and Laplace transforms, you cannot expect to commit wholeheartedly to devouring the novels of Ian McEwan, Robert Ludlum or Michael Crichton much more Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. (Personal sentiment: Add to the list the Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which until now remains impossible for me to read because I'm busy with equipment design.) I must say no amount of coffee could leach the stain of a straightforward prose so devoid of creativity it reminds you of the solution of a problem involving quadratic equations.
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I think I have to allow myself to graduate first before I allow my subconscious to resurface because seriously by that time, all hell will break loose.
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