Therapy for the Writer: Learning to Trust the Subuncular Mind
It's all so simple! Years ago I learned how weird the creative mind is. Subconscious thought needs to be given a great deal of leeway in the artistic process. One of the first real short stories I wrote ( real meaning that it wasn't written as an assignment for a creative writing of English class) was called "The Rapist." I'd been reading a lot of Russian literature, particularly Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Gogol along with European existentialism and theater of the absurd. I was 21 at the time and had taken a semester off from college because my major -- anthropology -- meant I wasn't getting enough opportunity to read what I wanted (which was fiction -- existential fiction in particular). I also wanted to see what would happen if I just got up every morning and wrote with no purpose and no planning. At first I wrote pathetically pedantic plays with characters espousing idiotic philosophical notions about mortality, God, and religion. What I really wanted to do