Let Your (Sub)conscious Be Your Guide
By Liz Michalski | April 14, 2017 |
Flickr Creative Commons: Photophilde
“I didn’t know what I was writing about until I’d finished the book.”
Have you ever heard an author say that? Have you ever said it yourself?
It’s happened to me more times than I can count. As authors, we can be blind to the themes in our own work. I have a theory — often, what we’re writing about is influenced by what our subconscious is secretly grappling with. If we can recognize those issues and themes, we can use them to deepen and strengthen our writing.
First, let’s look at why we may not recognize these emotions and themes. In my experience, writers are often not self-aware. Oh, we’re great at identifying feelings like panic and self-doubt, but we’re not always completely cognizant of how events impact us physically and emotionally. Here’s another theory — as writers, we’ve trained ourselves (or have been born with the temperament) to turn our attention outside, not in. We worry about what other people think, what other people are doing or saying or feeling, and not about what we think or feel. This creates a disconnect between what our emotions actually are, and what we think we’re feeling. We insist we’re happy and relaxed, for example, even when friends or family point out that our hands are clenched or we’re scowling.
So what do we do with all those churning thoughts and emotions we don’t acknowledge? We push them into the bottom of our busy brain’s caldron, where they bubble and combine and eventually threaten to spill over. Now, this disconnect isn’t limited to writers — emotions are tricky territory for many people. BUT — writers, unlike their normal counterparts, have a way to work through what’s bothering us, often without being aware that we’re bothered. And it’s these unacknowledged emotions or issues that help to shape our story and give it cohesiveness. It’s the wound under the bandage of words that the reader senses but never sees, and if it’s done right, it leaves a mark.
Here’s an example from personal history. When I was writing my first book, I was in the middle of several major life changes. I had just become a parent, and I was moving — a good and positive move to a neighborhood with features like sidewalks and trash pickup and grocery stores you didn’t have to drive a half-hour to get to — and when I told people I was thrilled, I truly meant it. But to get to this new home, I was leaving behind a little spot in the country that I loved. And in the exhaustion of new parenting and the rush of packing and listing the house and finding a new place, the sadness and regret of saying goodbye got pushed to the back of my brain.
In odd moments I kept noodling away at the book I was working on, which I’d billed in my head as a type of phantom love story along the lines of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. But funnily enough, the biggest and most wrenching love story in it turned out to be between one of the characters and a house, an impractical country heap he adores and has to leave.
Coincidence? I think not. Consciously done? Definitely not.
Since then, I’ve gotten better at recognizing these hidden emotions in my writing before I’ve actually finished the story, and I’ve learned how to use them to strengthen and deepen my work. Here are two steps that have helped me:
Create distance. It’s hard to see what you are writing about when you are right in the middle of it. With enough time and space away, it is easier to pick out the hidden issues and themes of what you’ve been writing. Then, once you’ve recognized them, you can work to deepen them and enhance your story.
Here’s another example. Shortly after I started my second novel, a friend passed away unexpectedly. She was someone who had been very important to me, but we were at different stages of our lives — she’d raised her children and was on to grandchildren, and I was just starting out as a parent. When I moved, our friendship naturally faded and we drifted apart. I hadn’t seen her for several years before her death, although we’d corresponded and had made plans to meet several times — plans she’d delayed, I later realized, because she’d been so ill.
A few months after she died, I had to stop writing because of life demands. When I was finally able to pick the book back up, I wasn’t sure I’d recognize the story any more. What I did recognize, however, was my lost friend. In those months after her death that I’d been able to write, my subconscious had stitched her throughout the pages. I found her in the physical description of the main character, in that character’s favorite expressions, in the wine she drank and the dogs she raised. It was a tiny delight. And having recognized her, I was able to go back and build a more realistic character, and use the emotions I finally recognized I felt at losing her to create a more poignant and dramatic sense of grief in several key scenes.
My time away from my novel was about three months, which is a serious chunk of time. It may be impossible for you to leave a manuscript for that long, but if you can find a way to come back to it with fresh eyes, a shorter span of time off would certainly do.
Compare your life to standard milestones and become aware of how they impact you. What are big events for people your age? What type of emotions do those events arouse? Are you dealing with them on a surface level? Even if you don’t think they pertain to you, take a harder look.
A few months ago I came up for air from the business of daily life and realized how much closer I am to being an empty-nester than new mother. All around me friends are sending their slightly older children off to college, and in a few short years that will be me. One night I took that knowledge and a glass of wine to the first 20,000 words of my latest WIP and suddenly understood that the whole book is actually all about parenthood, about how desperately I’d like my children to remain young, about what I would give to keep them that way.
But of course the actual words on the page are nothing like that. My characters aren’t sitting around realizing they are getting older and that their children are soon to leave. My readers may never glimpse this deeper story — but if I do it right, if I use the knowledge I now have to build a secret second structure below the first — they’ll feel it in every word.
And what if I never find those readers? What if these last two books turn out to have been written just for me? Then the process of self-discovery will still have been worth it. My lost friend will still be there, safely threaded throughout the story for me to find, now that I know where to look for her. And my children will always be young and I will always be their parent, and I will recognize how deeply that role matters to me and what I would do to keep it.
Sometimes, the most important reader is yourself.
Your turn — have you discovered unexpected themes in your writing? Were you able to use them to deepen your story? If so, how?
[coffee]
Liz Michalski’s (she/her) second novel, Darling Girl, was published in 2022 by Dutton. Her first novel, Evenfall, was published by Berkley Books (Penguin). Liz has been a reporter, an editor, and a freelance writer. In her previous life, she wrangled with ill-tempered horses and oversized show dogs. These days she’s downsized to one husband, two children and a medium-sized mutt.
Actually, this gives me chills. It’s uncanny how our subconscious can work its way up into our consciousness. When I began my current WIP and without any conscious planning on my part, an incident from my childhood popped up to become a major pivotal point in my story. The incident was traumatic and stayed with me for decades but was quite forgotten by the time I began writing. Or so I thought. Thanks for reminding me I need to further explore this, Liz.
I’m glad it was helpful, Linnea. I find it fascinating how hard our subconscious is always working. I hope your writing is helping you to process the incident you mentioned.
Thanks for tackling a vital component of the writing life, and for your honest and illuminating examples, Liz. It’s happened frequently to me, and I honestly wonder if the hidden themes can be perceived before at least one complete draft. I don’t think so. At least not for me. My subconscious even throws up feint themes—things I *think* I’m delving when my subconscious later unveils that it was brewing and brooding on things completely different (and usually more raw and revealing).
But having said that, I’ve occasionally even been oblivious to subconscious shouting—things that should’ve been quite apparent to me even as I wrote them. For example, I’d started my first manuscript shortly after my mother-in-law’s passing. We’d been extremely close, and I’d known at the time finally sitting down to write was a “life’s too short” thing. But it took outside eyes to point out to me that not one but two mothers die in the book, and that dealing with grief heavily effects and influences the behavior and decisions of my primary protagonists. Duh, right? And yet, I was floored when it was pointed out to me.
I totally agree that it takes getting clear of the work to see. Often beta-readers have been critical to my insight, even if they don’t overtly seek to ascertain themes and discuss them. And I also agree that finding them and deepening them is essential to writing the best possible book. And it seems if they startle you, and make you uneasy about sharing them, all the better. All the more emotionally revealing and personal. Which is the hardest but most important thing I’ve learned about this already-tough gig.
You’ve gotten me thinking today. Thanks, Liz! Have a blessed holiday weekend with your family, my friend. If it’ll help, go on and act like they’re never leaving home. Consider it a subconscious feint. ;^)
Thanks, Vaughn! And I agree — beta readers can be crucial to identifying hidden themes — that should have been my third point.
Have a great holiday weekend yourself, and thanks for the advice. I hold them tight while I have them. (Too tight, if you ask them!)
The Christian fantasy writer Ted Dekker gave a great keynote address last year in which he stated that he uses stories to answer his own questions.
I think you’re saying something similar. Every work in progress is really not about its characters, but about us. What’s bothering us. What needs to be resolved. What matters. Finding our own peace.
That is certainly true for me. My current WIP takes my protagonist on a journey to understand why the one he loves had to leave him. It’s not autobiographical, it’s supernatural in part, but it does spring from my life.
In this case, I did not discover the unconscious purpose of the story. I started with it. And there’s an urgency to the narrative that’s different than I’ve ever felt before.
So, yeah. I’m on board with what you’re saying. Write what you know, and what do we know better than ourselves?
I haven’t heard of Dekker, Benjamin — I will have to look him up. I”m glad this piece resonated with you — good luck with your writing!
Hm, sounds like you’re asking writer’s to “Embrace the Naked Self”. That grouping of words seems familiar. I vaguely remember a lady or bird (like a robin) planting a similar seed of self-development.
Bah. Maybe I’m wondering off the beat-up path.
Liz, Unexpected Themes was my pin name (not really). I remember it like it was yesterday, sitting in my basement, and working on my masterpiece (of crap). Writing one story was my unwavering goal (apparently not). Just one frickin story! Nope, it wasn’t going to happen. Over the course of 6 years, I went from working on one story to working on one story while spinning off thirty-three story ideas. I never finished that ONE STORY, as-a-matter-of-fiction, I haven’t finished the thirty-third one nor the stories in between, either. I haven’t completed. One! Single! Story! LIZ! Thanks for the reminder, Liz! Thanks a-whole-entire-lot, LIZ!!!!! *sniffle, sniffle*
Ok, I’m sorry. Hold on. Give me a second. Embracing self- now. Wooo Saaaa! I’m better.
Were you expecting that? *smile*
Where was I? Unfinished stories? Right. I’ve changed my story writing process and increased my self-awareness. My new process encourages me to flush out my themes before I write the story, and then, flesh out the targeted theme. I can’t comment on the effectiveness of the process, yet. It’s still too early to tell. Hopefully, I’ll know by the end of the year.
Self-awareness, on-the-other-hand, has always been a focal point of my life. I’ve gone so far as to create a three-word phrase to describe my life’s purpose:
Awareness
Connection
Tranquility
I know in every story, one, or all three, of these words, will be a part of my story message.
Yeye- not quite what you were referring too, but more-or-less, that’s how unexpected themes have affected this guy, right here.
To answer one of your initial questions, no I wasn’t able to deepen my story, but I was able to multiply my story.
Sort of.
Maybe.
No.
Fine.
Whatevs.
Hi, Liz, hi.
Have you been hitting the caffeine too hard again, Brian? ; )
I somehow missed Robin’s post — I’ll look for it tonight. Thanks for pointing it out to me. And good luck with your new process — it sounds intriguing.
NO CAFFEINE!
That was yesterday.
I saw the name Liz Michalski and I couldn’t contain my excitement.
Robin’s post – archive January 11, 2013,
Embrace the Naked
There’s a half-naked man sitting on the gas. I don’t know where Robin was going with the picture, though.
There’s a half-naked man sitting on the *gas*. Wow, let’s change that word to *grass*.
Now I HAVE to look. (And damn, why did I go with birds and not a half-naked man? What was I thinking? That Robin is just always a step ahead….) Sitting on the gas would have been more interesting.
Liz, thank you for this piece! I just finished the draft of a novel that on the surface is “not about me,” but looking back, I can see my own issues and deep, often conflicting emotions. The same thing is true for the motifs that run through it: for example, I didn’t set out to make photography a significant player until I understood about halfway through that it was happening, and I could/should follow through.
Thanks again for your insights. This is a piece I’ll hang onto and re-read as I work.
Thanks, Gerry! I’m always shocked by how much is in my stories that I didn’t plan for or expect. For me, that’s why I’ve always needed an extended cooling off period after I finish. I’m glad the post was helpful, and good luck with your writing.
Wow, this post is so timely for me, Liz. Your title grabbed me and your “what we’re writing about is influenced by what our subconscious is secretly grappling with.” I’ve been listening to Robert Olen Butler (Pulitzer Prize author) in his webcasts about just this kind of writing: letting the subconscious or unconscious take the lead in your storytelling. Butler calls it “dreamspace” where you can find the fictional truths. Of course, Butler’s From Where You Dream is a popular writing book, but his webcasts Inside Creative Writing reflect everything you are saying. I love when you point out that “Sometimes, the most important reader is yourself.” So true!
One of the best things about writing for WU is how much I learn from the comments. Thank you for sharing Butler’s name — I hadn’t heard of him, but just looked him up and it sounds like something I would very much be interested in. I’ll try and listen to a webcast by him sometime soon!
Butler’s webcast is 17 Episodes of him writing a short story, using his “dreamspace” approach. He explains the why and how of the process through every paragraph. I’m loving it and trying to watch one episode a day.
I was writing a story about a child on Titanic and after leaving the manuscript for a month, I remembered that I too had made a similar Atlantic trip as a child when my parents emigrated to Canada.
I traveled with my mother, too young to have my own passport. We landed at Halifax, a place I visited often when I moved to Nova Scotia a few years later.
I had traveled over the Titanic’s resting place.
My mother stayed below deck from seasickness while I, age six, wandered the ship unsupervised. I was using my own memories of the ship’s white railings and the cold wind and being given tea and cookies by the crew, similar to my five-year-old character.
In a way, I was the kid on Titanic. Ironically, walking in his shoes. It was easy to visualize his baby sister’s shoes.
In 2010, I visited the Halifax Maritime Museum expressly for the Titanic exhibit, but walking about, I found a model of the Cunard liner HMS Franconia, our ship. I sat in the replica of a Titanic deckchair and stared at the real one in a glass case. Most of all, I was affected by a pair of baby’s shoes from one of the young passengers. There was a story there, and it followed me all the way to Vancouver… haunted me for years.
And the uncanny thing… I looked up some of my old baby photos and there I was, age two, wearing a pair of identical shoes.
I’ve posted a picture of the Titanic child’s shoes on my website blog post today. TOMORROW, April 15 is the anniversary of the sinking of Titanic in 1912.
What a fascinating story, Veronica. And how different times must have been. To have that freedom as a child must have been amazing.
I am sorry your comment didn’t go through. I found it hung up in the spam folder — I’m glad I was able to retrieve it. Thanks for sharing.
I’m experiencing the same ‘unable to post’ problem as last week. I will try again, but I really wish this could be repaired.
While writing a story about a child on Titanic, I left the manuscript for a month, and when I returned to it, it occurred to me that I too had made a parallel trip over the same Atlantic route, as a child when my parents emigrated to Canada.
I traveled with my mother, too young to have my own passport. We landed at Halifax, a place I visited often when I moved to Nova Scotia a few years later. I had traveled over the Titanic’s resting place.
My mother stayed below deck from seasickness while I, age six, wandered the ship unsupervised. I was using my own memories of the ship’s white railings and the cold wind and being given tea and cookies by the crew. Similar to my five-year-old character. In a way, I was the kid on Titanic. Ironically, walking in his shoes. It was easy to visualize his baby sister’s shoes.
In 2010, I visited the Halifax Maritime Museum expressly for the Titanic exhibit, but walking about, I found a model of the Cunard liner HMS Franconia, our ship.
I sat in the replica of a Titanic deckchair and stared at the real one in a glass case. Most of all, I was affected by a pair of baby’s shoes from one of the young passengers.
And the uncanny thing… I looked up some of my old baby photos and there I was, age two, wearing a pair of identical shoes.
I’ve posted a picture of the Titanic child’s shoes on my website blog post today. TOMORROW, April 15, is the anniversary of the sinking of Titanic in 1912.
second and third attempts… no luck. I’m disappointed, I have a relevant comment to share as Titanic’s anniversary is tomorrow. Maybe a site monitor can retrieve my post. Someone did that last time. A few others had the same difficulty.
Hi, Liz:
Every single time.
I got to the end and went, “Huh.” Some aspect of the human experience I’d only vaguely grasped at the outset got explored and revealed in some way by the end.
The need for absolution (The Devil’s Redhead)
Survivor’s guilt (Done for a Dime)
The masked rage of sons toward their fathers (Blood of Paradise)
The impossibility of hope without love (Do They Know I’m Running?)
The eerie seduction of getting trapped in one’s defining tragedy (The Mercy of the Night)
I think these themes only reveal themselves near the end, when the hero is having to make the crucial decision that will lead to success or failure. And the path to that decision has taught his creator a thing or two as well.
Wonderful post. Thanks so much. Great way to end the week–and celebrate Good Friday.
Writing is definitely a way to work out those themes and issues, David — sounds as if you’ve had much success doing that. I’m trying to catch those themes a little earlier in my work so I can make use of them more consciously, but you are right — it’s often not till the end that they reveal themselves.
Thanks for the insights, Liz. I’m one of those writers who are not especially (or at all) self-aware. Yet, after writing a couple of novels, I came to see that there actually are themes in them. Community. Family. Being an outsider needing to be on the inside. Sure enough, there they are in the subsequent novels. Now that I understand that, like you I can incorporate that into the ways I think about my characters and what they make happen.
Sometimes I’m as obtuse as a tree, Ray, so I hear you. If I didn’t write I’m not sure I’d ever realize what was bothering me. Glad the post worked for you.
Great post, Liz. In the stretch of time that I have been working on this particular novel, I’ve come to see that the “loss” in the story was really only a mirror to deeper losses that are now coming onto the page. All along the fears of losing someone rippled through the text, but the bigger loss–that my father died when I was so young I barely knew him–was really the story I was attempting to tell. The subconscious works out problems throughout our lives. I’m glad to have mine as a writing partner.
I’m sorry for the loss of your dad so young, Ginny. And I’m glad that your writing has given you a way to explore the loss. I’m fascinated by what our brains hold onto over the years, and the way our subconscious works to process what happens to us, creating hints that eventually blossom into full and rich themes. Much luck with your writing.
I’m reasonably self-aware, Liz, but now you have me wondering what literary Easter eggs I’ll discover in my writing down the road. It’s a fascinating process, isn’t it? Write unconsciously, consciously augment the unconscious, learn/heal, and then possibly (unconsciously) orient the unconscious to a higher plane of understanding.
And if you understand that, I’m sorry. ;)
I have – every novel I’ve written I’ve learned has loneliness as a theme. And someone taken away from Home, and they return to it so they can figure out stuff. laugh.
Catching up on WU after a busy week, and I love this post. I see my subconscious struggles in everything I write, but never more so than my latest WIP, which ended up dealing quite directly with events from my own childhood. The subconscious rose to the surface (much like a submerged body rises to the surface in the plot) and became the story. Writing it, thinking deeply about events from almost thirty years ago, was good for my soul. I grew and found that finally, after more than two decades of hanging on, I had finally been able to forgive completely and let go.
Christ is risen!
Liz, this is almost the only really good post on writing I have seen on the Internet. The real story lies beneath the written story–just below the skin. It may take years or decades of suffering to be able to write beneath the skin of even an apparently frivolous novel. I’ve just discovered that a novel I wrote the year Kurt Cobain killed himself is about me, and my trauma–and I have to write THAT story before the book will be finished. In my case, the real story is concealed from the reader as well as most of the characters. No one but me really puts it all together. I do give the reader a good chance, however: the hints begin on the first page.
It’s hard to keep all these different consciousness straight. No, it’s actually harder to keep those consciousnesses apart–from each other and from me.