I've had it explained to me once as fright over whether these "voices in my head" would induce me to murder someone. *shrugs*
Really, the way I see it, I get to have an entire group of people who like to protest a lot while muses throw images and cake at me. It's like having a congressional floor in my mind over plotlines. If I don't have someone else to bounce ideas off of, I can just bounce it off them and think how they'd look at it. Instant feedback.
>>They are not me, they have their own integrity as personalities, and in that way they are external individuals. Yet, they are made from me and my sense of their integrity is no doubt strengthened by the fact that I have loaned them my own, and in that way they are internal parts of me.
Yes! You've explained that wonderfully well! A lot of good thought here, I'm going to have to come back to it. And the idea that in Storyspace you are somehow on an equal plane with them; I like that.
I should come back to this and think some more. But the question about the squick. I think it's at least partially fear-- writers are always, I think, more aware than others of the limits of imagination and mind, and they know they're on tricky ground, but we don't *talk* about it, at least not in such a concrete way, because we're not *that* weird, I mean maybe I dreamed about Draco Malfoy every night for a month and hear his voice in my head all the time, but I still know the difference between fantasy and reality!--- right? Er...
Hm.... I think some people tend to read highly individual muses as either sort of pretentious or sort of insane. Like- these people don't really talk in your head, you're just using them as a device to clarify your own thoughts! Don't take this pretense too far, or else you're either a) confused about where your mind ends and the 'real world' begins, or b) pretending you are (a) because you think it makes you an obsessed-but-cool-because-of-it writer.
Driven by the muse, right? But sometimes people who don't have muses, who just kind of write from wherever, tend to think it's either fake- that people are pretending to have muses but really muddle along like everyone else- or crazy/stupid/silly, because, honestly, you are you are you, totally separate people do not exist in your head.
I don't have muses, although I'm not, uh, squicked by people who do. It seems like a good deal to me, actually- free dialogue- but characters have never internalized enough for me to feel comfortable with them outside a narrative context. It's why I can't write fic well, natch.
I've always wondered if people who don't 'believe' in such exsistences of very real type muses or just the notions of muses in itself are operating on the same kind of fear people show to schitzophrenics. The idea that hearing voices is some form of mental illness and not at all healthy...especially those writers that have that Storyspace where they can also exsist as self (writer, artist, person etc).
To take it a step further, what about two writers who work together whose muses actually interact with one another? It is definitely something I have heard called not only impossible but highly disturbing which intrigues me because I know quite a few people where this is a reality. I often pondered the notion that the more real a fictional persona is portrayed under the label of muse and the more concrete they seem to the author the more they are likely to be viewed as disturbed...more so if the author believes it is not only themselves but also people they are in contact with on a personal or creative level can see, hear, talk to such muses.
...I am rambling but you have brought up a topic I am highly interested in so yes. I ramble.
Science News just had an article on that... It seems to be deconditioning that people aren't "supposed" to have them, but in reality, we pretty much all do as kids, and most imaginative people still do. Er, well, I'm expanding and simplifying from the article, but still...
http://sciencenews.org/articles/20050326/bob8.asp
A quote towards the end: Her team interviewed 50 fiction writers, ranging from an award-winning novelist to scribblers who had never been published. Of those authors, 46 provided vivid examples of made-up characters who had taken over the job of composing their life stories and who sometimes resisted their creators' attempts to control the narrative. Some fictional folk wandered around in the writers' houses or otherwise inhabited their everyday world.
Taylor suspects that similar hauntings occur in other jobs in which people predict others' opinions and behaviors.
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branchandroot) wrote2005-04-27 05:05 pm
no subject
Really, the way I see it, I get to have an entire group of people who like to protest a lot while muses throw images and cake at me. It's like having a congressional floor in my mind over plotlines. If I don't have someone else to bounce ideas off of, I can just bounce it off them and think how they'd look at it. Instant feedback.
(no subject)
no subject
Yes! You've explained that wonderfully well! A lot of good thought here, I'm going to have to come back to it. And the idea that in Storyspace you are somehow on an equal plane with them; I like that.
I should come back to this and think some more. But the question about the squick. I think it's at least partially fear-- writers are always, I think, more aware than others of the limits of imagination and mind, and they know they're on tricky ground, but we don't *talk* about it, at least not in such a concrete way, because we're not *that* weird, I mean maybe I dreamed about Draco Malfoy every night for a month and hear his voice in my head all the time, but I still know the difference between fantasy and reality!--- right? Er...
(no subject)
muddling attempt at explanation
Hm.... I think some people tend to read highly individual muses as either sort of pretentious or sort of insane. Like- these people don't really talk in your head, you're just using them as a device to clarify your own thoughts! Don't take this pretense too far, or else you're either a) confused about where your mind ends and the 'real world' begins, or b) pretending you are (a) because you think it makes you an obsessed-but-cool-because-of-it writer.
Driven by the muse, right? But sometimes people who don't have muses, who just kind of write from wherever, tend to think it's either fake- that people are pretending to have muses but really muddle along like everyone else- or crazy/stupid/silly, because, honestly, you are you are you, totally separate people do not exist in your head.
I don't have muses, although I'm not, uh, squicked by people who do. It seems like a good deal to me, actually- free dialogue- but characters have never internalized enough for me to feel comfortable with them outside a narrative context. It's why I can't write fic well, natch.
Re: muddling attempt at explanation
Re: muddling attempt at explanation
no subject
To take it a step further, what about two writers who work together whose muses actually interact with one another? It is definitely something I have heard called not only impossible but highly disturbing which intrigues me because I know quite a few people where this is a reality. I often pondered the notion that the more real a fictional persona is portrayed under the label of muse and the more concrete they seem to the author the more they are likely to be viewed as disturbed...more so if the author believes it is not only themselves but also people they are in contact with on a personal or creative level can see, hear, talk to such muses.
...I am rambling but you have brought up a topic I am highly interested in so yes. I ramble.
(no subject)
imaginary friends/muses
http://sciencenews.org/articles/20050326/bob8.asp
A quote towards the end: Her team interviewed 50 fiction writers, ranging from an award-winning novelist to scribblers who had never been published. Of those authors, 46 provided vivid examples of made-up characters who had taken over the job of composing their life stories and who sometimes resisted their creators' attempts to control the narrative. Some fictional folk wandered around in the writers' houses or otherwise inhabited their everyday world.
Taylor suspects that similar hauntings occur in other jobs in which people predict others' opinions and behaviors.
Re: imaginary friends/muses
Re: imaginary friends/muses