“What do you think the prize is for winning the Tour d’Olympus?” I asked out loud the other day.
“No.” said the boyfriend firmly and immediately. “No, you can’t ask me questions about something you made up.”
I gave him heart eyes. “I love that you were so quick with that,” I cooed at him.
He is truly my anchor keeping me on this physical plane when I go exploring in the metaphysical.
When I do deep dives into researching topics for story ideas – the history of the Model-T, Victorian weddings, the Kuiper Belt, 1820’s interior decoration, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, etc., I call him my spelunking partner, holding the climbing equipment on the ground level, there to remind me to climb back up and start with the writing already instead of getting lost forever in a maze of underground caves about Neanderthal DNA or the Tour de France cyclist Resistance members of WWII or the Cupula on the International Space Station.
Also, when I enthusiastically gush about something I wrote as if relaying something I read somewhere, he is always quick to remind me that I wrote that.
He wants to make sure that I am taking credit for my own ideas and work instead of thinking of them as something external that has nothing to do with me. There may also be an element of reminding me, no, I can’t have that cute alien creature as a pet or go swimming in that space station pool because I made those up.
Its sweet, and its important, and a good reminder, but, as a non-writer, I don’t think he truly gets how external the writing process can feel at times – often times I don’t feel like I made something up – I feel like I discovered something that had always been there, just waiting for me to find it.
Writing often feels less like a process of sitting down and making things up, and more like setting out on a voyage to learn new things, see new places and meet new people.
Many artists of all mediums can relate to this feeling. Michelangelo famously said:
“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”
The subconscious is doing more work than most people realize, puzzling away at all the info we feed it and seeing how it can fit together in new patterns, and when it offers up ideas and solutions it can feel like a gift from the gods.
Many people report consciously working on a problem throughout the day – a story plot or math formula or song composition, with no results. Then, after going to sleep, with the subconscious churring away at it all night, often times people awake with the idea in their head, as if given to them overnight by the god of dreams.
Paul McCartney said he woke up one morning with the music for what would become the song “Yesterday” playing in his head, as if his brain had suddenly turned into radio waves for the “Future Hits” channel, and he stumbled to his piano, franticly playing and writing down the notes to capture it before it floated away, as so many dreams do in full sun.
The music struck him as being so separate from his conscious thoughts that he was terrified the song – that he could tell was going to be great – was something already created by someone else that he had simply remembered and he worried he would be plagiarizing:
“For about a month I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before. Eventually it became like handing something in to the police. I thought if no one claimed it after a few weeks, then I could have it.”
So he kept the song he had “found” on his creative voyages.
In the same way, I “keep” the ideas I find inside my own head, often appearing overnight like a Night-blooming Cereus, delighted at what arises like a new island from the dark ocean of my unconscious.
So, hoist the sails and cast off! Time to find new ideas! And discover what the winner of the Tour d’Olympus gets.
Kara Race-Moore Writes More 