Shakespeare once said "know thyself" and I believe it was in the same in the same play Hamlet that he also wrote "To thine own self be true". Now obviously you have to know yourself to be true to yourself and in if you wanted to update that to modern lingo it could all be summed up by saying to be self aware. As a human being on this great spinning globe in the milky way it's almost nigh impossible know yourself without also knowing those around you and being aware of all the environment and biological impacts that help to shape and mold and change you as a person. I'm an introvert so I spend a lot of time inside my own head trying to get to know myself. I'm not even halfway close to understanding me let alone the motivations of others on this planet. As a writer I spend a lot of time trying to figure these things out so that I can build characters and worlds where I want to live. People watching is one of my favorite past times. I love to play a game with myself where I'll pick out two people and imagine what their story is. Maybe they're past lovers meeting by accident in a coffee shop and all of the "what ifs" come cropping up and they make that connection again and move on to get married. Maybe they're in the middle of a divorce and both people are struggling trying to remember who they are without the other one. There are so many stories out there that I feel as if I could write till my last breath and never have written them all. Sometimes that thought excites me and sometimes it overwhelms me but in every case I can't help but write down my impressions and think that one day those strangers will end up in one of my stories.
Know yourself. It's tricky to know yourself. How do you go about it? Do you trust what you believe to be true about yourself or do you rely on the feedback you get from those outside of yourself? How do you know yourself when yourself is a compilation of so many varied and twisted different elements. Is it possible to know yourself at all when faced with all of those elements. I don't now but I've started a writing project that will hopefully help me to at least rediscover my past self. A story about a young girl whose family is constantly on the move and the imagination or her "secret place" in her own mind that she so often retreats to. I may not know myself as I am today but I know that little girl. She was me, to some extent she still is me. Maybe to understand the me that exists today I need to go back and re-discover the me that was.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Imagination Rocks and sometimes rolls..downhill..through the mud
I've been told that as an Indie Author it's important to keep a blog. It helps with the writing everyday and it lets your readers get to know you on a more personal level. I'm not sure anyone really wants to get to know me on a personal level. Hell I don't want to get to know me on a personal level and I have to live inside my own head. I apologize to my readers before hand and I hope you won't judge my stories based on the insanity that runs rampant through my mind.
This morning on the way to work I caught myself chasing the white rabbit down the rabbit hole in my mind. I was pulling into to get gas and realized I wasn't completely sure how I got there. It's as if when I get behind the wheel of a car my conscious mind shuts off and my imagination runs wild. Sometimes I pretend I'm trying to outrun the bad guys on Interstate 70. It's not like I just pretend and I'm still aware of other cars around me..it's more like my imagination is in the drivers seat and my subconscious has taken over. Other time I'll hear a song on the radio and pretend that I'm some smoky, lounge club singer, who has secret powers that she has to keep hidden from the world or else they'll lock her away in a lab or try to use her for evil purposes. Still other times I'm just so wrapped up in whatever story I'm writing or book that I'm reading that I can't shut it off and though I'm driving home and I know the way I'm completely on auto-pilot. I think this means that I'm not a safe driver.
Take today for instance, I was driving to work and remembered I needed to get gas. I found myself at the gas station not quite remembering how I got there. Why? Because I was daydreaming again this time about a series of books I had just recently read by another Indie Author Heather Killough-Walden's Big Bad Wolf series. I was so totally gone over her world and I was imagining myself as a character in one of her books. I think I'd love to be painted as one of the Queens from the Kings series which is a spin off of the Big Bad Wolf Series. I could totally see myself as the Shadow Queen, I look good in black! This is why I was on autopilot this morning. Had I had my head in the right place i.e. the here and now I might not have tripped over the gas hose and gone sprawling across the pavement. This necessitated a return trip home to change clothes before heading into work. This made me late to work, which made my co-worker anxious and chatty which annoyed me further. Imagination gone horribly wrong.
It's o.k. to be a dreamer the world needs us as much as they need innovators and philanthropists and teachers and all the other types of people that make living on this planet tolerable. It's maybe not so o.k. to dream so often that you never wake up.
This morning on the way to work I caught myself chasing the white rabbit down the rabbit hole in my mind. I was pulling into to get gas and realized I wasn't completely sure how I got there. It's as if when I get behind the wheel of a car my conscious mind shuts off and my imagination runs wild. Sometimes I pretend I'm trying to outrun the bad guys on Interstate 70. It's not like I just pretend and I'm still aware of other cars around me..it's more like my imagination is in the drivers seat and my subconscious has taken over. Other time I'll hear a song on the radio and pretend that I'm some smoky, lounge club singer, who has secret powers that she has to keep hidden from the world or else they'll lock her away in a lab or try to use her for evil purposes. Still other times I'm just so wrapped up in whatever story I'm writing or book that I'm reading that I can't shut it off and though I'm driving home and I know the way I'm completely on auto-pilot. I think this means that I'm not a safe driver.
Take today for instance, I was driving to work and remembered I needed to get gas. I found myself at the gas station not quite remembering how I got there. Why? Because I was daydreaming again this time about a series of books I had just recently read by another Indie Author Heather Killough-Walden's Big Bad Wolf series. I was so totally gone over her world and I was imagining myself as a character in one of her books. I think I'd love to be painted as one of the Queens from the Kings series which is a spin off of the Big Bad Wolf Series. I could totally see myself as the Shadow Queen, I look good in black! This is why I was on autopilot this morning. Had I had my head in the right place i.e. the here and now I might not have tripped over the gas hose and gone sprawling across the pavement. This necessitated a return trip home to change clothes before heading into work. This made me late to work, which made my co-worker anxious and chatty which annoyed me further. Imagination gone horribly wrong.
It's o.k. to be a dreamer the world needs us as much as they need innovators and philanthropists and teachers and all the other types of people that make living on this planet tolerable. It's maybe not so o.k. to dream so often that you never wake up.
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