How often do you let your mind flow? I do it often, and I
don’t think I’m that different than most
I believe it is important for a writer to allow their mind
the luxury of random, scattered thoughts now and again. One never knows where
they will lead. I have gone from thinking about my grandchildren, to their activities,
to my own activities when I was their age. An example might be my oldest
granddaughter’s dance, to my love of dancing, with no real skill to match her
grace of movement. Or, the way my other granddaughter loves soccer which leads
to memories of my sons playing soccer, to my. . . well, once again my lack of
grace.
However, I may have said how important it is for a writer to
allow their mind to flow, I also know it is equally important for a writer to
focus their mind onto one thought. If I did not do this, my thoughts of my
granddaughter’s dance would lead to my clumsiness, to injuries, to visits to
the ER, to friends visiting in the hospital, to going away with friends, to the
local carnival that will be coming to town, to the kind of vendors there are,
to how sanitary their booths really are, to an outbreak of the Bubonic Plague
.
Yes, I must try my best to focus at times. While those
random thoughts I mentioned above, may seem farfetched, it is a normal occurrence
for me, with a wide variety of topics traveling through the recesses of my mind
on any given session – yes, session. What else shall I call it?
Instead, my thoughts of my granddaughter could lead to more
focused thoughts of my love of trying to dance, to my first dance, to the boy
who only danced with me because of a dare, to how I felt, to how youth might
feel today when they are teased or bullied, to what schools are doing today to
prevent bullying, to mean kids growing up to be evil adults, to police having
to deal with evil, to the over-loaded court system, to lawyers who are the ones
making out on the deal, to. . . I think you get what I’m saying.
You may think this is just as random a thought sequence as
the first, but in reality there is a certain reasoning to these thoughts. If I
was going to write a novel based on a defense attorney – a wealthy defense
attorney – who is having doubts about their client – evil client, of course – I
might just go back in time to find out what makes my character tick. In this case, she could even be a prosecuting
attorney, depending on her memories of those past hurts and pains, leading up
to why she became what she is.
Taking a glimpse into our own minds can open our eyes to the
mind of a character. We don’t always think about things that actually happened
to us, but often we do. Other times our random thoughts may stem from a TV show
or movie we recently viewed. In either case, by allowing our minds to wander,
we may be able to use subjects in a different way than what we viewed, with
different characters, thus not plagiarizing our fellow writers.
By allowing our mind the freedom to flow, we can lasso the
parts we like and use them in our plots. We can develop new characters based on
some real and some fictional personality traits from people we know or those we
imagined. Only we know the truth of how these characters developed from
inception to the printed page.
When we were children, we were likely told not to daydream.
However, we are in control of our own life now, and I say, if you want to be
creative, let your mind flow where it leads. If you want to be a writer, do the
same, then take what theme those thoughts may have provided and let those
thoughts flow into a story.
