Process again - Where do those plots come from?
Mare Kuntz
plots? Right now I'm looking at a list of elements I want to write
about and trying to come up with a plot I can fit them into; probably
not the way most people do things. I've had plots come to me whole in
dreams, I've combined two standard plots with a technology idea to get
a new plot... what does everyone else do?
-Mare
Will Shetterly
Start by recognizing that there are three kinds of plots: action plots (stories
about accomplishing things), relationship plots (stories about lovers, friends,
enemies, families, etc.), and character plots (stories about people changing).
The best stories tend to have all three. They may start separately, but it's
artistically satisfying if they all come together.
The heart of plot is conflict, so think about protagonists and antagonists (not
heroes and villains, 'cause that can lead to remarkably simpleminded
characterization). Remember that those roles may change: in romance stories,
the lovers often begin as antagonists. As for the character plot, remember that
you can be your own worst enemy.
cheers,
Will
--
Life's not fair. That's why we should be.
Regarding Emma Bull and Will Shetterly's writing workshops:
http://www.starwatcher.org/workshops.html
PWrede6492
wshet...@aol.comSNIP (Will Shetterly) writes:
> sunand...@excite.com (Mare Kuntz) wrote:
>>Would anyone like to share the techniques they use to come up with
>>plots? Right now I'm looking at a list of elements I want to write
>>about and trying to come up with a plot I can fit them into; probably
>>not the way most people do things. I've had plots come to me whole in
>>dreams, I've combined two standard plots with a technology idea to get
>>a new plot... what does everyone else do?
Sorry; I've been at a convention all weekend, and am just catching up.
Some stuff has scrolled off my server or never arrived, hence the double
quote.
What you're talking about sounds a bit like the development phase of
the idea to me -- is that what you're trying to get at? Because it sounds
as if you already have a couple of "seed" ideas that need developing,
rather than as if you have no ideas and no notion of how or where to
get started. If it's something else that you're after, you'll have to be
a little more specific (or e-mail me the message, if it was clearer before
it got excerpted; I'm in catch-up mode, and I won't have time to chase
stuff down on Deja News for a while...)
Anyway, this is one of those things where not only "everybody works
differently," but also "every *book* works differently." How you develop
an idea or a set of ideas into a story depends on how your personal
head works, on what sorts of ideas you've got already, and sometimes
on what sort of book you think you want to write.
If you're having
trouble, you may not have achieved critical mass yet -- you may need
one more improbable idea to get the "spark" that links up all the ones
you already have. In that case, the thing to do is to cast around for
that other idea. This usually means doing random background reading;
books of anecdotes are good for some people, The Learning Channel
and Scientific American are good for others, history or archaeology are
often good...what is most likely to work depends largely on what
interests and intrigues you. Experience will eventually provide enough
information for most folks to figure out where to find the stuff that's
most likely to trigger your backbrain.
Or it may be that you don't need yet another odd bit from somewhere;
what you need is to develop the logical relationships among the ones
you have. You can do that with a top-down approach, a bottom-up
approach, or a middle-sideways approach.
If you're working from the top down, you look at your pieces and decide
what sort of book they seem to imply -- mostly action-adventure,
mostly comedy-of-manners, etc. If they're suitable for a number of things,
you just make an executive decision that you wish to write X sort of book.
Or you decide that these bits and pieces look like a good way of
examining a particular question or theme. Starting from that, you work
out what sort of plot and characters and setting fit what you have decided
you want to do. Sometimes, the bits that triggered the whole process
end up not belonging in the book at all (I've got one scene in my head
that has, thus far, produced three entirely different stories without
actually ever getting written; I may be able to use it as the trigger for
my books for the rest of my life, at this rate).
If you're working from the bottom up, you start with the bits you have
and ask yourself things like "How could they have gotten into this
situation?" and "What could go wrong with this technology?" and "Who
would care about this development and what would they do about it?"
This is the plot-noodling thing that I tend to prefer ("plot-noodling" is a
term of convenience; asking questions works just as well for
developing characters or setting, if that happens to be what you need).
The exact sort of questions will depend on what sort of writer you
are and what things you need in order to get going; if you are a
character-centered writer, then you'd poke at the people who'd be
involved with the bits until you found one you liked, but if you're
a plot-centered writer, then you'd poke more at the events and how-
could-they-get-here. I'm not quite sure what you poke at if you're
theme- or mode-centered; maybe the questions themselves?
If you're working from the middle out, you sort of do both simultaneously,
or alternately -- you think about what sort of book you want to write, and
then you think about what could go wrong with the bits you have and
how people could have gotten there, in the context of the book you
think you want to write, and then you wonder if maybe it wouldn't be
more interesting if you wrote a slightly different kind of book, and then
you check on how the bits fit and what that suggests about how
things might go.
You can also do any of these things in either an extremely methodical,
almost mechanical fashion, or in an extremely loose and intuitive fashion.
And there are probably a bunch of other methods I haven't even thought
of -- "nine and sixty ways" is really rather a lot when it comes to making
lists. But that's what comes to mind off the top of my head.
Patricia C. Wrede
Jason Zavoda
On 24 Apr 2000, PWrede6492 wrote:
> In article <20000424014501...@ng-cb1.aol.com>,
> wshet...@aol.comSNIP (Will Shetterly) writes:
>
> > sunand...@excite.com (Mare Kuntz) wrote:
> >>Would anyone like to share the techniques they use to come up with
> >>plots? Right now I'm looking at a list of elements I want to write
> >>about and trying to come up with a plot I can fit them into; probably
> >>not the way most people do things. I've had plots come to me whole in
> >>dreams, I've combined two standard plots with a technology idea to get
> >>a new plot... what does everyone else do?
>
I start with a title then build the story word by word from there.
Plot just happens, I have ideas about what I would like but I don't want
to force conscious decisions on a story if they just don't fit. Sometimes
the events and characters follow a course which I have thought about but
more often than not the flow of the story takes them in directions which
I had not previously imagined.
/snip/
> If you're having
> trouble, you may not have achieved critical mass yet -- you may need
> one more improbable idea to get the "spark" that links up all the ones
> you already have. In that case, the thing to do is to cast around for
> that other idea. This usually means doing random background reading;
> books of anecdotes are good for some people, The Learning Channel
> and Scientific American are good for others, history or archaeology are
> often good...what is most likely to work depends largely on what
> interests and intrigues you. Experience will eventually provide enough
> information for most folks to figure out where to find the stuff that's
> most likely to trigger your backbrain.
Poetry, History, Mythology and the Classics (Shakespeare,
Plutarch, etc... the great books of the western world). These are
where I find my best sources of inspiration, but everyone has a
different muse.
>
> Or it may be that you don't need yet another odd bit from somewhere;
> what you need is to develop the logical relationships among the ones
> you have. You can do that with a top-down approach, a bottom-up
> approach, or a middle-sideways approach.
/snip/
To quote Blackadder.
"In english we say good morning."
Sorry good advice here, it just sounds confusing to me at first.
> You can also do any of these things in either an extremely methodical,
> almost mechanical fashion, or in an extremely loose and intuitive fashion.
> And there are probably a bunch of other methods I haven't even thought
> of -- "nine and sixty ways" is really rather a lot when it comes to making
> lists. But that's what comes to mind off the top of my head.
>
> Patricia C. Wrede
>
Whatever method used it all comes down to putting your thoughts
into words and getting them down onto paper or up onto a screen. I
follow the intuitive path because it works for me and in the past I had
tried the more mechanical way of order and method. If one method fails
to work, try another, but keep on trying till you find the way that
works for you. It is the, keep on trying, part that is the most important.
At least in my experience.
Jason Zavoda
Chuck Gee
> Would anyone like to share the techniques they use to come up with
> plots?
> -Mare
>
>
For me, what has worked well is to always be on the alert for a plot idea.
Then when you get one, write it down immediately so you won't forget.
Place note pads and pens at strategic areas: your headboard, in your car,
wherever you watch television or read. Never, ever go to a party or
other such social gathering without writing material. In fact, never go
out without a pen and pad. I've had good ideas come to me while attending
football games, weddings, movies, plays, in taverns, etc..
Once you've accumulated a number of these plot ideas, put them into a
database or textfile. Then, whenever you need a plot or idea, it's easy
to scan down the list of such. Once in a awhile, take some time to read
through the list of ideas, adding to them or modifying them. Sometimes an
idea that didn't seem all that great initially will take on new life by
what you've appended to it.
I've another "plot idea" generator. I don't recommend this for
everyone, but it does work for me. Send your family out for an evening
so you can be completely alone. Drink a little alcohol; if you're
so inclined, do a doobie. Moderate these substances so you still have
much of your cognitive skills left intact: Just do enough to shift
things a little. Then watch documentaries on PBS or TLC, Discovery,
or whatever. I actually go so far as to videotape said documentaries
beforehand specifically for the purpose of generating ideas. Upon review,
about 90% of the ideas produced during such an evening turn out to be
trash -- but some gem will always turn up.
Another great plot generator is serendipitous exploration of either the
World Wide Web or large libraries. Just wander around, looking into
places you've never really explored before. It's amazing what you'll
find, what ideas will spring to mind.
Then, of course, there's always the tried and true method of having an
adventurous past. It's worked well for many authors. I don't know of
your particular past, but if you have yet to have any adventures, you
probably ought to stop writing for a year or two and go out and find one.
Travel, join the military, become a firefighter, get some odd but exciting
job (logging, for instance, or hire out as a crewmember on some fishing
boat going to Alaska). You may not like what you're doing, but you'll
come out of it with some great plot ideas, scenes, characters, and the
like.
Good luck!!
Will Shetterly
>I'm not quite sure what you poke at if you're
>theme- or mode-centered; maybe the questions themselves?
Since I'm character-centered (I think) and have only recently begun to
appreciate theme, I tend to approach it through the characters: What do they
need to learn, or should fail to learn? What issues will they confront? Since
theme is an underlying thing, I suspect it's reasonable to approach it through
any other concern:
Plot: What issues are suggested by the major events in the story?
Character: What issues do the characters face in their interactions? And as
individuals?
I dunno about technique. Maybe you'd ask yourself what subjects would inspire
some very cool metaphors.
Okay, I thought that was funny.
I don't know whether there are any other ways to approach theme. Either you
pick one at the beginning to help you shape the story you want to create, or
you find the theme in the story you are creating, just as you find the plot and
the characters. Since I think a story can be defined as characters in conflict
resulting in change, the approach to theme, for me, would have to be through
one of those aspects.
This is rough, but I need to get back to the unending book now.
Will Shetterly
>Drink a little alcohol; if you're
>so inclined, do a doobie. Moderate these substances so you still have
>much of your cognitive skills left intact: Just do enough to shift
>things a little.
The world's full of writers who take that approach. So far as I can tell, it
ultimately hurts them. I think it comes from a desire to shut down the internal
editor, but there are easier ways of coming up with ideas that have less
potential for becoming self-destructive, like going for long walks or taking
showers or finding other forms of simple, rhythmic activity that let the mind
wander while the blood flows.
Keep in mind that this is being written by someone who, in his time, has done a
good number of recreational drugs, and who is not born-again or an AA member or
anyone who is preachy about drugs--I'm a libertarian on the issue: legalize,
educate, and regulate.
But I am preachy on the matter of writing. I believe the best writing is done
with your mind at peak efficiency.
cheers,
Mare Kuntz
> I start with a title then build the story word by word from there.
I've tried doing this, but my dramatic structure alway falls apart
30-60 pages in. It's too frustrating to put that much energy in and
then not be able to salvage any of it. How do you keep yours
functional?
-Mare
Mare Kuntz
> sunand...@excite.com (Mare Kuntz) wrote:
>>Would anyone like to share the techniques they use to come up with
>>plots? Right now I'm looking at a list of elements I want to write
>>about and trying to come up with a plot I can fit them into; probably
>>not the way most people do things. I've had plots come to me whole in
>>dreams, I've combined two standard plots with a technology idea to get
>>a new plot... what does everyone else do?
>What you're talking about sounds a bit like the development phase of
>the idea to me -- is that what you're trying to get at? Because it sounds
>as if you already have a couple of "seed" ideas that need developing,
>rather than as if you have no ideas and no notion of how or where to
>get started.
yep.
>Or it may be that you don't need yet another odd bit from somewhere;
>what you need is to develop the logical relationships among the ones
>you have. You can do that with a top-down approach, a bottom-up
>approach, or a middle-sideways approach.
This sounds like where I'm at now, although all these techniques seem
likely to come in handy sooner or later.
This is the list of elements I'm looking at:
Adaptability
Two minds in same body must integrate
Lifetime commitment
I have a secret
On the edge of humanity (e.g. werewolf)
Unusual love story
Traditional paradigms get bent
flensing/genetic engineering/dragon eggs (i.e. potential -> reality)
Cherryh psychoanalysis, people management
Complex social/biological/etc. systems
Deductive/inductive reasoning and analytical/intuitive thinking result
in a theory that allows the main character to manipulate the
world/gain power
Wry humor
Lackey characters, child versions of Cherryh characters/Card
characters
The Otta type (from C.S. Friedman's _This_Alien_Shore_)
Linguistics
>If you're working from the top down, you look at your pieces and decide
>what sort of book they seem to imply -- mostly action-adventure,
>mostly comedy-of-manners, etc. If they're suitable for a number of things,
>you just make an executive decision that you wish to write X sort of book.
>Or you decide that these bits and pieces look like a good way of
>examining a particular question or theme. Starting from that, you work
>out what sort of plot and characters and setting fit what you have decided
>you want to do.
That's what I'm having trouble with. Those elements could fit into a
true fantasy, a true sci-fi, or anything in between. I know I want
the tone to be intelligent, analytical, and somewhat playful. I think
I have to poke at the characters and see what kind of society(ies)
they want to live in, but I'd be grateful for suggestions on a plot
structure that these elements could be plugged into.
-Mare
PWrede6492
wshet...@aol.comSNIP (Will Shetterly) writes:
>I don't know whether there are any other ways to approach theme. Either you
>pick one at the beginning to help you shape the story you want to create, or
>you find the theme in the story you are creating, just as you find the plot
>and
>the characters. Since I think a story can be defined as characters in
>conflict
>resulting in change, the approach to theme, for me, would have to be through
>one of those aspects.
I think that would be how I would do it, too, if I dared. What I am
having trouble coming up with is how somebody who *does* start
with theme would poke at it to develop the other parts that she
needs to have a whole story. Part of it, I think, is that there do not
seem to be very many people who can work successfully in this way,
so I don't have any real-life models to look at and say "Well, so-and-so
does *this* with theme" and extrapolate from there. My inclination is
to go straight to plot or characters, but I bet there are people who
don't work that way, and I want to know how *they* do it.
Patricia C. Wrede
PWrede6492
Kuntz) writes:
>> Starting from that, you work
>>out what sort of plot and characters and setting fit what you have decided
>>you want to do.
>
>That's what I'm having trouble with.
Well, then maybe you ought to try working from the bottom up.
Judging from your list, you don't actually have any characters yet,
just "I want them to resemble..." You also, pretty clearly, don't have
a plot, and none of those bits sound much like scene-snippets.
So pick one of your bits and poke at it.
Who are your two minds who have to integrate into one body? Why
do they have to integrate? How did they get into this situation? Is
this, perhaps, the central core of your story -- how they come to
terms with each other? If not, look at one of your other bits -- what
sort of deductive/inductive/intuitive reasoning will produce this
theory that lets the characters conquor the world/gain power...and
why do they want to do that, and what's the theory, and how do
they apply it? Or is it the love story/relationship/commitment
stuff that appeals to you as central? Or something in the
complex social systems? What's your *story*?
>Those elements could fit into a
>true fantasy, a true sci-fi, or anything in between.
Yup. A lot of them, actually, strike me as background stuff, or even
as sort of proto-ideas that haven't yet solidified into actual ideas.
You might try getting a stack of three-by-five cards or Post-It notes,
writing one item of your list on each card, and then sorting them
into stacks that seem to fit together, and then see what they
suggest. I look at "lifetime commitment" and "Unusual love story,"
for instance, and I'd put them in the same stack, and possibly
add "adaptability" to that...but you could just as easily pair
"lifetime commitment" with your "two minds sharing body must
integrate" and "adaptability" with "I have a secret." And the sorts
of things that those pairings suggest is a bit different from the
first set. (The point of using cards is that you can re-sort things
several times, into as many or as few piles as seem appropriate;
you can always just list them in columns if that appeals more.)
> I think
>I have to poke at the characters and see what kind of society(ies)
>they want to live in, but I'd be grateful for suggestions on a plot
>structure that these elements could be plugged into.
That may be part of where you're having trouble -- mostly, one
doesn't pick out a pre-existing plot structure and plug things into
it, unless one is writing extremely formulaic stuff, like the old
Harlequin Romances that specifiedon what page the main characters
had to have their first kiss. Well, sometimes for short stories it
all comes whole and entire, but books mostly seem to need
working out a bit at a time (for these purposes, just sitting down
and writing qualifies as "working it out a bit at a time" -- the
working-out part just doesn't happen in advance of the writing part,
that's all).
And in those instances where one *does* say "I am going to write
a traditional quest fantasy," it still doesn't mean one can just plug
things in -- "traditional quest fantasy structure" just becomes one
more item on the list. You still have to figure out who the characters
are, what they want, what the goal or central story problem is, and
how they all get there.
Patricia C. Wrede
Jason Zavoda
On Mon, 24 Apr 2000, Mare Kuntz wrote:
I think I know what you mean, I've run into a creative muddy
zone with my stories and just slogged my way out the other side, but
I couldn't say that any attempt would be a complete waste even if
the writing became permanently mired. I feel I could always salvage
something and it will show me how not to write the story at the very
least.
Two things that have helped me a great deal are to work on a
small segement at a time and not look for perfection. Instead of writing a
dozen pages then going back for a review I write about two pages and make
sure I am happy with those two pages then do two more. The other thing is
that I am not searching for perfection in the first draft. In the past I
couldn't go twenty pages without a major revision. If the dramatic
structure cracks, I prop it up as best I can, make sure it will support
the continuation of the story and keep on writing.
Jason Zavoda
Dan Goodman
Mare Kuntz <sunand...@excite.com> wrote:
>Would anyone like to share the techniques they use to come up with
>plots? Right now I'm looking at a list of elements I want to write
>about and trying to come up with a plot I can fit them into; probably
>not the way most people do things. I've had plots come to me whole in
>dreams, I've combined two standard plots with a technology idea to get
>a new plot... what does everyone else do?
What seems to work best for me is: with my conscious mind, do the "webs
of association" thinking that Damon Knight says the unconscious mind is
better at. Turn the linear thinking -- which is what Knight says the
conscious mind is good at -- over to my unconscious mind. (Knight prefers
-- at least, in _Creating Short Fiction_ -- to call the
unconscious/subconscious "Fred;" but that's a minor detail.)
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Laurel Amberdine
news:20000424152034...@nso-fj.aol.com...
When I started with the "What makes someone good or evil?" theme I
thought "What characters would bring this idea into sharpest focus? What
situations?"
I stared with a neutral protagonist. She meets someone who is both good
and evil -- he somehow saved her life, but he somehow also put her in the
bad situation to begin with. Add lots of figuring-out and I had a young
noblewoman who meets an assassin. It turns out he killed her fiancé
(much complicating her life) but he killed her fiancé because her fiancé
was trying to hire him to kill *her*.
That was too simple though. (I'm a novelist at heart, dontchaknow.)
Added a tyrannical Empress doing awful things to people. But, she's also
trying to reform the system so the commoners can have decent lives.
Another good/evil question.
Then there are three other groups, also varying degrees of blended
good/evil. And they're all in conflict with each other. I tried to
make it tense and compelling, but a bit uncomfortable. Among all these
"sides" who do you *want* to win? Which highlights the theme question.
Hope that makes some sense.
--
-Laurel
Inspirational Quotes for Writers: http://www.mtco.com/~lbamber/quotes.htm
Babble: news://news.sff.net/sff.people.laurel
Personal page coming soon.
Chuck Gee
> g...@teleport.com wrote:
>
> >Drink a little alcohol; if you're
> >so inclined, do a doobie. Moderate these substances so you still have
>
> The world's full of writers who take that approach. So far as I can tell, it
> ultimately hurts them. I think it comes from a desire to shut down the internal
The key is moderation. If you take this approach only once or twice
a year, then little harm is done.
>
> I believe the best writing is done
> with your mind at peak efficiency.
> cheers,
> Will
> --
Yes -- certainly. However, we're not talking about the act of writing
here. We're discussing the acquistion of plot ideas.
Chuck Gee
>
>
> Will Shetterly wrote:
>
> g...@teleport.com wrote:
>
> >Drink a little alcohol; if you're
> >so inclined, do a doobie. Moderate these substances so you
> still have
> >much of your cognitive skills left intact: Just do enough
> to shift
> >things a little.
>
> It's a rare writer indeed who finds that drugs or liquor
> actually improve the writing. You may -think- it's better, but it's
> not.
> > Brenda
>
Please let me make my statement perfectly clear. I WAS NOT referring
to the actual act of writing. I was referring to a secondary method of
acquiring plot ideas. That's all. Even for a short story writer, using
the above method should not be needed too much, since one can generate
enough plot ideas in such a session to last half-a-year or so.
Will Shetterly
>Please let me make my statement perfectly clear. I WAS NOT referring
>to the actual act of writing. I was referring to a secondary method of
>acquiring plot ideas. That's all. Even for a short story writer, using
>the above method should not be needed too much, since one can generate
>enough plot ideas in such a session to last half-a-year or so.
And let me be perfectly clear in turn: Ideas that you come up with when you're
drunk, high, stoned, tripping, or in the altered state of your choice are much
less likely to be as interesting as the ideas that you'll come up with when
your mind is functioning without any chemical impairment.
Heather Anne Nicoll
> Would anyone like to share the techniques they use to come up with
> plots? Right now I'm looking at a list of elements I want to write
> about and trying to come up with a plot I can fit them into; probably
> not the way most people do things. I've had plots come to me whole in
> dreams, I've combined two standard plots with a technology idea to get
> a new plot... what does everyone else do?
I'm going to pull out TNH's chestnut here: Story is a force of nature.
Plot is a literary convention.
I don't come up with plots; I could tell you the plot of my novel, but I
couldn't tell it to you before I'd finished the first draft, because it
only existed looking back over it. Looking ahead over the stories I'm
working on, I can say, oh, two things that are going to happen in each
when I write that far... "Well, the narrator is going to get stabbed in
this one, and that's going to make his wife nearly lose her temper
(technical term to the story); they're going to organize a major meeting
at some point, and political stuff will happen," and "This person is
going to come down with mononucleosis immediately after the bit of story
I know about, which will have a few consequences I can see; this one of
the main characters is going to get subverted by this minion of an
antagonist and need to be rescued somehow." That's not plot; it's not
coherent enough to be plot.
I start up with a seed -- as mentioned before, my seeds seem to consist
of a handful of assorted odds and ends and a mode. I sit down and piece
together how the odds and ends fit, guided by the mode: if one of my
odds and ends is a character, I see how that character fits into the
corner of setting I have, or the fragmentary event I have, or whatever
my odds and ends actually are.
By the time I have a scene written, I have the story settled, and the
rest of the story is implicit in what I've got there, even if I don't
know exactly how it will grow. I can see events that have to happen in
the distance, like landmarks; I know how I have to travel to get there
(mode metaphor: is this a river journey that I have a boat for? if
it's overland, am I hiking, riding, using a wagon, using a buggy,
bicycling? Do I have a means of flight? And so on).
And I pick a landmark that seems closest, and set out in that direction
and see what happens on the way there. Sometimes I'm wrong about which
landmark I need to get to; sometimes I have no idea which I get to first
and wind up meandering around lost for a while before I find a trail. I
almost always, at least after I've hit one or two of my early landmarks,
know what the destination looks like, and so I can flag that as a final
landmark to guide me if I wind up dithering between nearer ones.
So I get story in little lumps and cross-connections. I can only say
what the plot was looking back and tightening up, and I don't find plot
really useful to me at all. (Especially since, after writing the plot
synopsis of something I'd written, I found that it missed the essence of
the story.)
--
Heather Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.dslonramp.net/~darkhawk/
I understand about indecision, I don't care if I get behind
People living in competition; all I want is to have my peace of mind.
- Boston, "Peace of Mind"
raks...@my-deja.com
> And let me be perfectly clear in turn: Ideas that you come up with
when you're
> drunk, high, stoned, tripping, or in the altered state of your choice
are much
> less likely to be as interesting as the ideas that you'll come up
with when
> your mind is functioning without any chemical impairment.
When I read the Turkey City Lexicon entry about stories which lead to
the realization, "Lo, we are all living in a jar of Tang!" I
immediately flashed on drunken/stoned/etc sessions in which people
would tell me similarly clever ideas. (Generally proceeded by a
statement like, "Isn't it amazing that I'm me, and you're you, but
we're, like, really the same person?")
It's similar to ideas I come up with in the middle of the night. It's
possible that they might be good. The trouble is, they all seem
equally brilliant, so the ordinary filtering and editing process
doesn't happen, and the next morning I am only able to shake my head in
awe at the memory that I had momentarily decided that I could solve a
knotty plot problem by giving one of my characters a last name. Any
last name. Don't ask.
And, on a side note, the single funniest altered state of mind scene
I've ever seen was in the unjustly neglected movie _Go_, involving
several tabs of ecstacy and a telepathic cat.
Rachel
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
PWrede6492
<cir...@NOSPAMmtco.com> writes:
>Hope that makes some sense.
It makes perfect sense. Maybe I just expect theme to be
non-intuitive because I don't happen to work that way, and
not because it's really all that much different from any other
way of working.
Patricia C. Wrede
Will Shetterly
>And, on a side note, the single funniest altered state of mind scene
>I've ever seen was in the unjustly neglected movie _Go_, involving
>several tabs of ecstacy and a telepathic cat.
Feh. Now I want to see it again. I liked it heaps, too.
Jo Walton
> It's similar to ideas I come up with in the middle of the night. It's
> possible that they might be good. The trouble is, they all seem
> equally brilliant, so the ordinary filtering and editing process
> doesn't happen, and the next morning I am only able to shake my head in
> awe at the memory that I had momentarily decided that I could solve a
> knotty plot problem by giving one of my characters a last name. Any
> last name. Don't ask.
It worked in :Galaxy Quest:. :]
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia; Poetry; RASFW FAQ; etc.
my fantasy novel :The King's Peace: coming from Tor in October
sample chapters on http://www.tor.com/sampleKingsPeace.html
Alma Hromic
wrote:
>In article <8e2rsd$qjr$1...@nnrp1.deja.com> raks...@my-deja.com writes:
>
>> It's similar to ideas I come up with in the middle of the night. It's
>> possible that they might be good. The trouble is, they all seem
>> equally brilliant, so the ordinary filtering and editing process
>> doesn't happen, and the next morning I am only able to shake my head in
>> awe at the memory that I had momentarily decided that I could solve a
>> knotty plot problem by giving one of my characters a last name. Any
>> last name. Don't ask.
>
>It worked in :Galaxy Quest:. :]
>
yeah <G> very cute, that.
A.
***************
"The difference between journalism and literature
is that journalism is unreadable
and literature is unread."
Oscar Wilde
Mary K. Kuhner
>And let me be perfectly clear in turn: Ideas that you come up with when you're
>drunk, high, stoned, tripping, or in the altered state of your choice are much
>less likely to be as interesting as the ideas that you'll come up with when
>your mind is functioning without any chemical impairment.
I will happily accept that this is true for you, and for people you
know, but it seems fairly arrogant to assert that it's true of
everyone.
I don't do drugs, but I've unstuck one or two story conundrums while
in ritual-induced altered states, or half out of my head with
fatigue or fever. The resulting ideas need to be picked through carefully,
but they are not always bad ones. It's similar to using ideas from
dreams, with a little more possibility of focusing on the story
you're working on (rather than getting, as I did the other night,
a Harry Potter plotline....)
If you're worried about the drugs--and good reason to be--there are
a wide variety of other methods for getting to the same place.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
James Nicoll
Will Shetterly <wshet...@aol.comSNIP> wrote:
>g...@teleport.com wrote:
>>Please let me make my statement perfectly clear. I WAS NOT referring
>>to the actual act of writing. I was referring to a secondary method of
>>acquiring plot ideas. That's all. Even for a short story writer, using
>>the above method should not be needed too much, since one can generate
>>enough plot ideas in such a session to last half-a-year or so.
>
>drunk, high, stoned, tripping, or in the altered state of your choice are much
>less likely to be as interesting as the ideas that you'll come up with when
>your mind is functioning without any chemical impairment.
Everytime I get nitrous oxide. I have the stunning illusion
that I can communicate with myself across time but only from one stoned-
out-of-my-gourd-on-nitrous-oxide moment to any other s-o-o-m-m-o-n-o
moment. It makes perfect sense while I am under nitrous but seems innately
useless, esp since I am only s-o-o-m-m-o-n-o at the dentist. More interesting
that my astounding moment of blinding clarity that my dentist must have seen
a lot of drool in his time, however.
--
Temporary Email: jdni...@home.com
[Just until I fix my current email problems]
Chuck Gee
> g...@teleport.com wrote:
> >Please let me make my statement perfectly clear. I WAS NOT referring
> >to the actual act of writing. I was referring to a secondary method of
> >acquiring plot ideas. That's all. Even for a short story writer, using
> >the above method should not be needed too much, since one can generate
> >enough plot ideas in such a session to last half-a-year or so.
>
> And let me be perfectly clear in turn: Ideas that you come up with when you're
> drunk, high, stoned, tripping, or in the altered state of your choice are much
> less likely to be as interesting as the ideas that you'll come up with when
> your mind is functioning without any chemical impairment.
>
> Will
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through Caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
Will Shetterly
>Will Shetterly <wshet...@aol.comSNIP> wrote:
>
>>And let me be perfectly clear in turn: Ideas that you come up with when
>you're
>>drunk, high, stoned, tripping, or in the altered state of your choice are
>much
>>less likely to be as interesting as the ideas that you'll come up with
>when
>>your mind is functioning without any chemical impairment.
>
>know, but it seems fairly arrogant to assert that it's true of
>everyone.
I did say "less likely." And, at the risk of sounding more arrogant, I do have
some experience with both drugs and writing. As always, people are welcome to
take what seems useful and leave the rest.
>I don't do drugs
Then you may be less qualified to comment on this matter.
>but I've unstuck one or two story conundrums while
>in ritual-induced altered states, or half out of my head with
>fatigue or fever. The resulting ideas need to be picked through carefully,
>but they are not always bad ones.
All ideas need to be picked through carefully. The problem that I've always
found using drugs, and from paying attention to the people I know who use
drugs, is that the ability to pick carefully is weakened by a weakened mind.
>If you're worried about the drugs--and good reason to be--there are
>a wide variety of other methods for getting to the same place.
My point exactly.
Will Shetterly
>On 24 Apr 2000, Will Shetterly wrote:
>> g...@teleport.com wrote:
>> >Please let me make my statement perfectly clear. I WAS NOT referring
>> >to the actual act of writing. I was referring to a secondary method
>of
>> >acquiring plot ideas. That's all. Even for a short story writer, using
>> >the above method should not be needed too much, since one can generate
>> >enough plot ideas in such a session to last half-a-year or so.
>>
>you're
>> drunk, high, stoned, tripping, or in the altered state of your choice
>are much
>> less likely to be as interesting as the ideas that you'll come up with
>when
>> your mind is functioning without any chemical impairment.
>
>A stately pleasure dome decree:
>Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
>Through Caverns measureless to man
> Down to a sunless sea.
Even if one great exception validated your proposition, I must point out:
1. Coleridge suggested, if I remember correctly, that the poem's creation had
more to do with dreaming than drugs. Even if he didn't, we can't know which was
more important, based on the evidence. I certainly agree that it's useful to
pay attention to your dreams.
2. If drugs were a major factor in writing the poem, perhaps, if Coleridge
hadn't indulged that night, he would've been able to finish the thing after his
visitor left.
My second point comes from personal experience. I can't remember finishing and
selling a thing that I began under the influence of any drugs. And I began
many.
And, for the record, my experience includes beer, wine, tequila, and other
forms of alcohol, marijuana, hashish, mescaline, LSD, amphetamines, opium,
cocaine, and some kind of seed from Hawaii whose proper name I no longer
remember. I'll happily grant that the flaw may have been in me, or I may not
have done the right drugs.
And now I should get back to finishing the book that's a bit overdue.
cheers,
LK
wrote:
>Would anyone like to share the techniques they use to come up with
>plots? Right now I'm looking at a list of elements I want to write
>about and trying to come up with a plot I can fit them into; probably
>not the way most people do things. I've had plots come to me whole in
>dreams, I've combined two standard plots with a technology idea to get
>a new plot... what does everyone else do?
> -Mare
I tend to begin with dialogue scenes. Love scenes and arugements work
well, because Iwonder why A said this and B responded with that. That
evolves into backstory, why are they arguing and why do they love each
other (not necessarily the same people in these dialogue scenes).
Works for subplots, too. Often once the arguements are written,
frequently in snippets, these conflicts flesh-out situations,
conflicts, character, backstory, and even settings. Rarely do these
arguements make it into the story. Same goes for the love scenes.
Arguements tell me what's important and what is threatening, so I can
build plots from that.
LK
Brenda
LK wrote:
Oh, me too! It's all conversation. Then events have to be set up so that
the key conversation can be held.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough, author of DOORS OF DEATH AND LIFE
From Tor Books in May 2000
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
Lucy Kemnitzer
Shetterly) wrote:
>And, for the record, my experience includes beer, wine, tequila, and other
>forms of alcohol, marijuana, hashish, mescaline, LSD, amphetamines, opium,
>cocaine, and some kind of seed from Hawaii whose proper name I no longer
>remember.
Hawaiian wood rose seeds? (Merremia tuberosa: though I saw another
latin name at a site that wouldn't let me stick around long enough
to copy it: it kept dumping me to another page which was selling
all those "legal highs" but I thought they had caught on to wood
rose and restricted it, but maybe not: I don't personally do any
of these things, so there's a lot I don't know)
>I'll happily grant that the flaw may have been in me, or I may not
>have done the right drugs.
>
I think it stands pretty well as a general rule which has
sufficient exceptions.
Truth to tell, I think Coleridge ran out of gas when he got to the
point where he had to have a plot, and the visitor was a
convenient thing to blame. Anyway, why didn't he reconstruct it?
Don't we all have to reconstruct things all the time? I think he
didn't because there wasn't really something to reconstruct.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>On Mon, 24 Apr 2000 01:23:24 GMT, sunand...@excite.com (Mare Kuntz)
>wrote:
>
>>Would anyone like to share the techniques they use to come up with
>>plots? Right now I'm looking at a list of elements I want to write
>>about and trying to come up with a plot I can fit them into; probably
>>not the way most people do things. I've had plots come to me whole in
>>dreams, I've combined two standard plots with a technology idea to get
>>a new plot... what does everyone else do?
>> -Mare
>
>I tend to begin with dialogue scenes. Love scenes and arugements work
>well, because Iwonder why A said this and B responded with that. That
>evolves into backstory, why are they arguing and why do they love each
>other (not necessarily the same people in these dialogue scenes).
>
>Works for subplots, too. Often once the arguements are written,
>frequently in snippets, these conflicts flesh-out situations,
>conflicts, character, backstory, and even settings. Rarely do these
>arguements make it into the story. Same goes for the love scenes.
>Arguements tell me what's important and what is threatening, so I can
>build plots from that.
This is exactly what I meant. All the questions kind of ripple
outwards from this first dialog (or sometimes the relationship,
and the dialog comes after I've been contemplating these two or
some people sitting or standing with respect to each other,
thinking about who is looking where, who is doing something to
keep from crying, and so on)
Lucy Kemnitzer
Eli Brandt
>drunk, high, stoned, tripping, or in the altered state of your choice are much
>less likely to be as interesting as the ideas that you'll come up with when
>your mind is functioning without any chemical impairment.
Sure, you've turned down the unconscious filtering, moved it into the
conscious domain. You're seeing candidate ideas you ordinarily wouldn't
have, and any given one is, with probability exceeding 0.9, crap.
A question that can't be so easily settled out of hand is how
interesting will be the best idea from a span of time spent in a
baseline versus in an altered state. This is presumably as
idiosyncratic as the rest of the creative process, so anecdote doesn't
say much. Neither do published studies, actually.
http://home.istar.ca/~psymon/biblio/biblio/creativity.html
(It's an interesting sfnal issue. Technology for altering mental state
will no doubt improve. Altered states that circumscribe the mind's
activity, as in Swanwick and Egan, will surely prove useful by our
lights. Those that expand its range may be valued more in other
cultures.)
I don't find pharmaceuticals expedient, but I spend time every day in
the hypnogogic state, where attention, logic, and memory are radically
impaired; the visual hallucinations and the paranoiac loosening of
associations would get me medicated right off if I were awake. Often I
find it useful. Dreams, real dreams ("not daydreams: dreams"), only
rarely.
--
Eli Brandt | el...@cs.cmu.edu | http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/
Will Shetterly
>On 25 Apr 2000 17:20:13 GMT, wshet...@aol.comSNIP (Will
>Shetterly) wrote:
>>And, for the record, my experience includes beer, wine, tequila, and other
>>forms of alcohol, marijuana, hashish, mescaline, LSD, amphetamines, opium,
>>cocaine, and some kind of seed from Hawaii whose proper name I no longer
>>remember.
>
>Hawaiian wood rose seeds?
Bingo! I think they were a great disappointment, though maybe I didn't treat
them properly.
>Truth to tell, I think Coleridge ran out of gas when he got to the
>point where he had to have a plot, and the visitor was a
>convenient thing to blame. Anyway, why didn't he reconstruct it?
>Don't we all have to reconstruct things all the time? I think he
>didn't because there wasn't really something to reconstruct.
Now, if he'd been willing to sit down and do a plot outline, he could've
finished that sucker in no time. Poets had it lucky. It's darn hard to sell a
vignette these days.
But I 'm not complaining--try making a living as a poet these days.
Graydon
>Truth to tell, I think Coleridge ran out of gas when he got to the
>point where he had to have a plot, and the visitor was a
>convenient thing to blame. Anyway, why didn't he reconstruct it?
>Don't we all have to reconstruct things all the time? I think he
>didn't because there wasn't really something to reconstruct.
There is a great deal of literary and other evidence that Coleridge
entirely fabricated that person from Porlock, which would appear to
form the basis one of the more obscure jokes in Douglas Adams' :Dirk
Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:.
--
angantyr | Uton we hycgan hwaer we ham agen,
@sympatico | ond thonne gedhencan he we thider cumen.
.ca | -- The Seafarer, ll. 117-118.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Shetterly) wrote:
>rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
>>On 25 Apr 2000 17:20:13 GMT, wshet...@aol.comSNIP (Will
>>Shetterly) wrote:
>>>And, for the record, my experience includes beer, wine, tequila, and other
>>>forms of alcohol, marijuana, hashish, mescaline, LSD, amphetamines, opium,
>>>cocaine, and some kind of seed from Hawaii whose proper name I no longer
>>>remember.
>>
>>Hawaiian wood rose seeds?
>
>Bingo! I think they were a great disappointment, though maybe I didn't treat
>them properly.
They are inextricably tied in my mind to these pink or blue
faceted glasses that the cute little English boy wore who carried
around the packet of seeds -- this is 1967. He was disappointed
in them too. He, by the way, actually tried the thing where you
pulled the fibers out of banana peel, dried them, and smoked them.
He was disappointed in that too. The faceted glasses got a better
review.
Me, I had most disturbing visions just staying up late at night
and staring out into the abyss. It was very clear to everyone,
myself included, I was Not A Candidate for mind-altering drugs.
>>Truth to tell, I think Coleridge ran out of gas when he got to the
>>point where he had to have a plot, and the visitor was a
>>convenient thing to blame. Anyway, why didn't he reconstruct it?
>>Don't we all have to reconstruct things all the time? I think he
>>didn't because there wasn't really something to reconstruct.
>
>Now, if he'd been willing to sit down and do a plot outline, he could've
>finished that sucker in no time. Poets had it lucky. It's darn hard to sell a
>vignette these days.
>
>But I 'm not complaining--try making a living as a poet these days.
Adrienne Rich does all right.
But, I know, "we're not Adrienne Rich."
Lucy Kemnitzer
Will Shetterly
>Me, I had most disturbing visions just staying up late at night
>and staring out into the abyss. It was very clear to everyone,
>myself included, I was Not A Candidate for mind-altering drugs.
Hey, it saved you a lot of money. And maybe more than that. I've come to the
conclusion that drugs are badly overrated. If you believe your life is
significantly improved by the use of mind-altering chemicals, change your life.
"Significantly" is the key phrase there, adds the fellow who is glad that
there's room in his life for the occasional Guinness or cider.
P Nielsen Hayden
>I've come to the
>conclusion that drugs are badly overrated. If you believe your life is
>significantly improved by the use of mind-altering chemicals, change your life.
I doubt you mean this rather cold advice for, just to pick a random example,
Teresa, whose life as a narcoleptic is certainly significantly improved by
the existence of a variety of prescribed "mind-altering chemicals."
If you don't mean it for her, can you also mean it for people for whom, say,
Prozac turned out to be the difference between night and day?
Absolutely, this stuff often gets given to people for whom it isn't optimal.
We're new at this. But I'll never forget the writer acquaintance who
remarked to me that, for him, what Prozac meant was that he didn't have to
spend the rest of his life with knives inside his skull.
Life is too short and precious to tell people categorically that they should
turn down incremental improvements, even if those improvements fall short of
our Platonic ideals of what a real "fundamental" improvement might be.
[And now I have to watch it lest I convince my friend Will that the only
reason I ever post to rasfc is to argue with him.]
--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
Leigh Kimmel
p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) writes:
>
> >I've come to the
> >conclusion that drugs are badly overrated. If you believe your life is
> >significantly improved by the use of mind-altering chemicals, change your life.
>
>
> I doubt you mean this rather cold advice for, just to pick a random example,
> Teresa, whose life as a narcoleptic is certainly significantly improved by
> the existence of a variety of prescribed "mind-altering chemicals."
>
> If you don't mean it for her, can you also mean it for people for whom, say,
> Prozac turned out to be the difference between night and day?
I suspect that he was referring to what is commonly called
"recreational drugs," as opposed to pharmaceuticals taken for a clearly
defined medical problem like narcolepsy or severe bipolar disorder.
Of course, many incidences of the use of "recreational drugs" turn out
to be the person trying to self-medicate for a biochemical problem that
can be more effectively treated by prescription drugs.
And then there is the problem of the unwanted side-effect of damping
creativity that a number of drugs have -- and then getting your
physician to believe that your creative faculties are indeed important
and that it is a significant reduction in your quality of life when you
can't write/draw/paint/etc. especially when your creative endeavors
aren't your primary source of income. If your
writing/drawing/painting/etc. is a "hobby," and not your primary job,
it's often easy for the doctors to say that you just need to find
another hobby, because it's most important to make sure that you can be
a good day-job worker.
--
One terrified boy and the girl who would save him.
"Claws of Vengeance" on sale now
http://www.alexlit.com/ Alexandria Digital Literature
Leigh Kimmel -- writer, artist and historian
leigh...@geocities.com
http://members.tripod.com/~kimmel/lhkwebpage.html
Ask me how to order the new Sime~Gen novel!
Check out my bookstore http://members.tripod.com/~kimmel/bookstore/
Will Shetterly
>On 26 Apr 2000 07:51:07 GMT, Will Shetterly <wshet...@aol.comSNIP> wrote:
>
>>conclusion that drugs are badly overrated. If you believe your life is
>>significantly improved by the use of mind-altering chemicals, change your
>life.
>
>I doubt you mean this rather cold advice for, just to pick a random example,
>Teresa, whose life as a narcoleptic is certainly significantly improved
>by
>the existence of a variety of prescribed "mind-altering chemicals."
Nope. So far, the conversation has only focused on what get called recreational
drugs--and, even there, I mentioned my fondness for the occasional recreational
use of recreational drugs. I've been objecting to the suggestion that drugs
inspire creativity. I've done a lot of drugs. I like to think some of my
published work has been creative. The only connections I see between my drug
use and my creative work has been that I sometimes describe drug use based on
my experience--and that's far less creative than simply imagining what drug use
would be like.
>[And now I have to watch it lest I convince my friend Will that the only
>reason I ever post to rasfc is to argue with him.]
Ah, you forget that I enjoy an argument--perhaps too much. I forget that there
are people who don't enjoy an argument, and take disagreement as personal
insult. So, argue on, and I'll try to keep making it clear that all of my
pronouncements are only my opinions, and they're only meant in the context of
the discussion that's underway.
Jo Walton
anga...@sympatico.ca "Graydon" writes:
> On Wed, 12 Apr 2000 13:41:33 GMT, Ero...@aol.com <Ero...@aol.com> scripsit:
> >Truth to tell, I think Coleridge ran out of gas when he got to the
> >point where he had to have a plot, and the visitor was a
> >convenient thing to blame. Anyway, why didn't he reconstruct it?
> >Don't we all have to reconstruct things all the time? I think he
> >didn't because there wasn't really something to reconstruct.
>
> There is a great deal of literary and other evidence that Coleridge
> entirely fabricated that person from Porlock, which would appear to
> form the basis one of the more obscure jokes in Douglas Adams' :Dirk
> Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:.
I loved that bit of DGHDA, that bit and the Bach lifted the book from
vaguely amusing to actually noteworthy for me.
I like the theory that the whole story of the noteably alliterative Person
from Porlock and the perfect unwritten imagined and lost poem is actually
part of the mode of Coleridge's :Kubla Khan:.
The story is _always_ told when the poem is read or taught or in
introductions to the printed poem. Without the story, without the
imagined lost rest of the poem, and the annoyance of the interruption
losing the irreplaceable image I don't think the lustre of what we
have of it would shine so bright.
Julian Flood
> Through Caverns measureless to man/ Down to a sunless sea.
I've forgotten how that one ends.
--
Julian Flood
Life, the Universe and Climbing Plants at www.argonet.co.uk/users/julesf.
Mind the diddley skiffle folk.
Mare Kuntz
wrote:
> Chuck Gee wrote:
>> Through Caverns measureless to man/ Down to a sunless sea.
>
>I've forgotten how that one ends.
(This is from memory, so details may be wrong.)
A damsel with a dulcimer
In vision once I saw
T'was an Abysinnian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Aborah.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song
To such a deep delight t'would win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air
That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry beware! beware!
Weave a circle 'round him thrice
And shade your eyes with holy dread
For he on honeydew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise!
-Mare
Kristopher/EOS
>
> Me, I had most disturbing visions just staying up late at
> night and staring out into the abyss. It was very clear
> to everyone, myself included, I was Not A Candidate for
> mind-altering drugs.
Which is what I had to convince a certain subset of my
friends of. People for whom such experiences are great
fun and/or hihgly insightful seem to have a very hard
time grasping the concept that they might not be so for
others.
The one time I have been truly drunk, it was pretty much
accidental, and I hated it. I knew I was drunk, I knew
it would go away, and I was still scared witless by the
sensations, by the altered state of mind.
I know, without a doubt, what a truly mind-altering drug
would be like for me.
Kristopher/EOS
Will Shetterly
>The story is _always_ told when the poem is read or taught or in
>introductions to the printed poem.
At eight or ten, I found the poem in a book that didn't include that story. I
wandered around for years reciting the first lines from love of hearing them. I
don't know when I heard that the thing wasn't considered complete--probably not
until college.
James Nicoll
Eli Brandt <e...@cs.cmu.edu> wrote:
>In article <20000424193718...@ng-fl1.aol.com>,
>Will Shetterly <wshet...@aol.comSNIP> wrote:
>>And let me be perfectly clear in turn: Ideas that you come up with when you're
>>drunk, high, stoned, tripping, or in the altered state of your choice are much
>>less likely to be as interesting as the ideas that you'll come up with when
>>your mind is functioning without any chemical impairment.
>
>Sure, you've turned down the unconscious filtering, moved it into the
>conscious domain. You're seeing candidate ideas you ordinarily wouldn't
>have, and any given one is, with probability exceeding 0.9, crap.
>
>A question that can't be so easily settled out of hand is how
>interesting will be the best idea from a span of time spent in a
>baseline versus in an altered state. This is presumably as
>idiosyncratic as the rest of the creative process, so anecdote doesn't
>say much. Neither do published studies, actually.
>http://home.istar.ca/~psymon/biblio/biblio/creativity.html
>
I am limited to two cups a day now but in the olds days, I'd knock back a
few pots of coffee and hammer away at the keyboard. Well, between trips
to the washroom...
P Nielsen Hayden
wrote:
>In article <slrn8gdr4...@pnh-0.dsl.speakeasy.net>
>p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) writes:
>
>>
>> >I've come to the
>> >conclusion that drugs are badly overrated. If you believe your life is
>> >significantly improved by the use of mind-altering chemicals, change your life.
>>
>>
>> I doubt you mean this rather cold advice for, just to pick a random example,
>> Teresa, whose life as a narcoleptic is certainly significantly improved by
>> the existence of a variety of prescribed "mind-altering chemicals."
>>
>> If you don't mean it for her, can you also mean it for people for whom, say,
>> Prozac turned out to be the difference between night and day?
>
>I suspect that he was referring to what is commonly called
>"recreational drugs," as opposed to pharmaceuticals taken for a clearly
>defined medical problem like narcolepsy or severe bipolar disorder.
Indeed, but as you yourself point out, the line is pretty fuzzy between the
two.
>Of course, many incidences of the use of "recreational drugs" turn out
>to be the person trying to self-medicate for a biochemical problem that
>can be more effectively treated by prescription drugs.
Or which happens to be most effectively treated by drugs that he or she
can't get by prescription.
>And then there is the problem of the unwanted side-effect of damping
>creativity that a number of drugs have -- and then getting your
>physician to believe that your creative faculties are indeed important
>and that it is a significant reduction in your quality of life when you
>can't write/draw/paint/etc. especially when your creative endeavors
>aren't your primary source of income.
No kidding.
However, I'd like to know: why is it we can easily accept that some drugs
can damp intelligence and creativity, but we recoil in horror at the
proposition that other drugs might enhance them? I smell taboo, not reason,
here.
Brooks Moses
> Prozac has been recommended to me in a non-clinical setting
> (ie, by a psychologist, even though I wasn't seeing him in
> any professional capacity), but besides the money factor,
> I'm confused enough as it is without wondering when it's
> the drug talking, and I don't like the idea of having my
> mind altered even if it is, according to some, broken.
Reminds me of what a friend of mine once told me, when another close
friend of mine (me being the point of connection between them) was being
perscribed antidepressants, and was having similar concerns --
particularly about the possibility that the antidepressants would make
her actual mental issues "go away" rather than actually getting them
resolved: The antidepressants don't _solve_ anything. They help you get
to a mental state where they're manageable so you can solve them
yourself. In other words, it's not "the drug talking", it's helping you
see things in a slightly different light but, once there, still _you_
dealing with the world.
Back to earlier points in this thread, I'd imagine the same is often
true with "recreational" mind-altering drugs. I gather, for example,
that some drugs tend to help one see the world in such a way that every
single thought is greatly and wonderfully interesting, down to "there's
a dirt spot on the wall". There are some ways that I don't want to be
helped to see the world, thankyouverymuch. (And some amusing ways that
I can see the world _without_ help, I'm told.)
- Brooks
raks...@my-deja.com
> And, for the record, my experience includes beer, wine, tequila, and
other
> forms of alcohol, marijuana, hashish, mescaline, LSD, amphetamines,
opium,
> cocaine, and some kind of seed from Hawaii whose proper name I no
longer
> remember.
Ooh, you've done opium. What was it like? Inquiring minds want to know.
> I'll happily grant that the flaw may have been in me, or I may not
> have done the right drugs.
Obviously you needed to smoke dried banana peelings, for that mellow
yellow feeling...
Rachel
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
raks...@my-deja.com
> Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
> >
> > Me, I had most disturbing visions just staying up late at
> > night and staring out into the abyss. It was very clear
> > to everyone, myself included, I was Not A Candidate for
> > mind-altering drugs.
>
> Which is what I had to convince a certain subset of my
> friends of. People for whom such experiences are great
> fun and/or hihgly insightful seem to have a very hard
> time grasping the concept that they might not be so for
> others.
There's a larger principle there. It's the inability to understand that
tastes differ, which is probably a subset of solipsism. (ObSF: Iain
Banks' _Against A Dark Background_.) It's highly annoying, and rarely
more so than if you happen to be a college student who'd rather
abstain.
> The one time I have been truly drunk, it was pretty much
> accidental, and I hated it. I knew I was drunk, I knew
> it would go away, and I was still scared witless by the
> sensations, by the altered state of mind.
>
> I know, without a doubt, what a truly mind-altering drug
> would be like for me.
I have no desire to convert you the joys of Fun With Controlled
Substances, but in fact experiences with one drug don't necessarily
transfer to experiences with other drugs. From my own, admittedly
limited experience:
Alcohol: Fun if I'm already in a reasonably good mood.
Pot: Several trials produced no noticeable effect.
Laughing gas: Never again. This was not for fun, but in a dentist's
office. I had an intense feeling of suffocation, so I started
hyperventilating, which made it worse, and I panicked and started
screaming hysterically. The dentist, the creep, informed me later that
I'd had one of the commoner adverse reactions. Of course he hadn't
bothered to warn me in advance...
Prozac: Probably saved my life, but I hesitate to count it as a mind-
altering drug (and wouldn't have even thought of it if Patrick hadn't
brought it up). Depression is mind-altering. Prozac just restored me to
whatever level of sanity is normal for me.
P Nielsen Hayden
>p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) wrote:
>>On 26 Apr 2000 07:51:07 GMT, Will Shetterly <wshet...@aol.comSNIP> wrote:
>>
>>>I've come to the conclusion that drugs are badly overrated. If you
>>>believe your life is significantly improved by the use of mind-altering
>>>chemicals, change your life.
>>
>>I doubt you mean this rather cold advice for, just to pick a random
>>example, Teresa, whose life as a narcoleptic is certainly significantly
>>improved by the existence of a variety of prescribed "mind-altering
>>chemicals."
>
>Nope. So far, the conversation has only focused on what get called
>recreational drugs--and, even there, I mentioned my fondness for the
>occasional recreational use of recreational drugs. I've been objecting to
>the suggestion that drugs inspire creativity.
As I just now remarked elsewhere in the thread, I object to your objection.
All kinds of powerful experiences -- danger, sex, power, mysticism --
inspire creativity. Why should we believe that taking drugs is the only one
that doesn't?
I also suspect your argument relies overmuch on a distinction -- that
between supposedly "recreational" drugs and the supposed non-recreational
sort -- which is rooted not in science or even in clear patterns of human
behavior, but rather in a legal structure I know for a fact you disagree
with.
Going back to your original assertion: If Teresa wasn't lucky enough to be a
middle-class white woman with access to neurologists, she might well have
become someone who illegally bought and consumed stimulants (perhaps
cocaine, perhaps bathtub methamphetamine) because they made her feel less
miserable all the time. She would be no less a narcoleptic than she is in
this universe, but her drug consumption would be firmly categorized as
"recreational." And she would be among the people you appear to be airily
instructing to "change your life."
I'm sure many such people exist, and they'd love to change their lives.
However, things being as they are, your instructions ring kind of like a
wealthy landlord telling homeless people to get into the stock market. As
someone I admire once observed, life isn't fair; that's why we should be.
>>[And now I have to watch it lest I convince my friend Will that the only
>>reason I ever post to rasfc is to argue with him.]
>
>Ah, you forget that I enjoy an argument--perhaps too much. I forget that there
>are people who don't enjoy an argument, and take disagreement as personal
>insult. So, argue on, and I'll try to keep making it clear that all of my
>pronouncements are only my opinions, and they're only meant in the context of
>the discussion that's underway.
Of course, it's also possible for people who _do_ "enjoy an argument," and
who don't routinely "take disagreement as personal insult," to differ over
what does and doesn't constitute good manners and fair rhetoric.
Conceivably, not everyone who objects to our behavior is a benighted soul
who can't enjoy a rousing round of healthy argument, poor thing.
Mary K. Kuhner
Will Shetterly <wshet...@aol.comSNIP> wrote:
>Ah, you forget that I enjoy an argument--perhaps too much. I forget that there
>are people who don't enjoy an argument, and take disagreement as personal
>insult. So, argue on, and I'll try to keep making it clear that all of my
>pronouncements are only my opinions, and they're only meant in the context of
>the discussion that's underway.
You might want to watch out for the converse--you're prone to interpret
insultedness as disagreement, and thereby assume that anyone
who is offended by your way of expressing yourself must disagree with you.
It's not necessarily so, certainly not for some personality types: I
tend to feel a kind of moral obligation to react *more* strongly to
offensively arrogant and aggressive presentations of ideas I agree
with.
This leads to disconnections of the following kind:
A: Quit yelling!
B: My ideas are right!
A: Quit yelling!
B: My ideas are right!
Not very productive.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Will Shetterly
>why is it we can easily accept that some drugs
>can damp intelligence and creativity, but we recoil in horror at the
>proposition that other drugs might enhance them? I smell taboo, not reason,
>here.
Hey, I put a lot of time, money, and brain cells into researching that
proposition. If someone's had better luck than me, I'd love to hear the
details.
Will Shetterly
>>So far, the conversation has only focused on what get called
>>recreational drugs--and, even there, I mentioned my fondness for the
>>occasional recreational use of recreational drugs. I've been objecting
>to
>>the suggestion that drugs inspire creativity.
>
>inspire creativity. Why should we believe that taking drugs is the only
>one
>that doesn't?
Did you catch my list of drugs that I tried and found wanting? I'd love to hear
what you think works.
>I also suspect your argument relies overmuch on a distinction -- that
>between supposedly "recreational" drugs and the supposed non-recreational
>sort -- which is rooted not in science or even in clear patterns of human
>behavior, but rather in a legal structure I know for a fact you disagree
>with.
You are correct.
>Going back to your original assertion: If Teresa wasn't lucky enough to
>be a
>middle-class white woman with access to neurologists, she might well have
>become someone who illegally bought and consumed stimulants (perhaps
>cocaine, perhaps bathtub methamphetamine) because they made her feel less
>miserable all the time. She would be no less a narcoleptic than she is
>in
>this universe, but her drug consumption would be firmly categorized as
>"recreational."
Not by me. I ran for governor of Minnesota (and came in third out of a field of
six, I am always proud to add) on a platform that included the principle that
people should be able to choose the drugs that improve their lives.
I repeat, the sentence you're objecting to was in the context of a discussion
of drugs and creativity, of drug use practiced to become more creative. You're
the first to introduce the element of medical need. And I grant it.
>I'm sure many such people exist, and they'd love to change their lives.
>
>However, things being as they are, your instructions ring kind of like a
>wealthy landlord telling homeless people to get into the stock market.
That's amusing. I feel like a homeless guy yelling at the wealthy landlords to
get out of the stock market.
>it's also possible for people who _do_ "enjoy an argument," and
>who don't routinely "take disagreement as personal insult," to differ over
>what does and doesn't constitute good manners and fair rhetoric.
>
>Conceivably, not everyone who objects to our behavior is a benighted soul
>who can't enjoy a rousing round of healthy argument, poor thing.
Certainly true.
Will Shetterly
>Ooh, you've done opium. What was it like?
I confess, it was my favorite. Very dream-like. A bit scary in retrospect: I
fell down on a beach and cut myself, and didn't notice until I saw the blood.
Hmm. From descriptions I've heard of Valium, it might be a bit like that.
Everything's nice and slow and remarkably agreeable.
P Nielsen Hayden
>Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com wrote:
>>On 26 Apr 2000 18:23:48 GMT, Will Shetterly <wshet...@aol.comSNIP> wrote:
>>>So far, the conversation has only focused on what get called recreational
>>>drugs--and, even there, I mentioned my fondness for the occasional
>>>recreational use of recreational drugs. I've been objecting
>>>to the suggestion that drugs inspire creativity.
>>
>>All kinds of powerful experiences -- danger, sex, power, mysticism --
>>inspire creativity. Why should we believe that taking drugs is the only
>>one that doesn't?
>
>Did you catch my list of drugs that I tried and found wanting? I'd love to
>hear what you think works.
You're moving the goalposts. You made a categorical assertion that drugs
don't improve creativity for anyone. The burden of proof is on you, and
asserting that nothing you've tried works for you is not really an adequate
response.
Honestly, I'm not advocating any particular drug, nor suggesting that
aspiring writers should run out and experimentally pop a bunch of pills.
I'm just saying that the assertion that drugs never improve anyone's
creativity seems, well, extremely unlikely, given the variability of human
neurology.
>I ran for governor of Minnesota (and came in third out of a field of
>six, I am always proud to add) on a platform that included the principle that
>people should be able to choose the drugs that improve their lives.
Indeed you did, and if I had lived in Minnesota that year, I would have
voted for you. Which is why it surprises me to hear you emitting the
bafflegab of the War on Some Drugs.
>I repeat, the sentence you're objecting to was in the context of a discussion
>of drugs and creativity, of drug use practiced to become more creative. You're
>the first to introduce the element of medical need. And I grant it.
I did more than that. I pointed out that "medical need" is a socially
constructed category, and to a very great extent a function of very
arbitrary choices. You appear to be quite determinedly not getting this
point. Please do try.
>>I'm sure many such people exist, and they'd love to change their lives.
>>
>>However, things being as they are, your instructions ring kind of like a
>>wealthy landlord telling homeless people to get into the stock market.
>
>That's amusing. I feel like a homeless guy yelling at the wealthy landlords to
>get out of the stock market.
Yes, we get that. I'm suggesting that your self-image and the effects of
your rhetoric are, in this matter, at some variance.
P Nielsen Hayden
>raks...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
>>Ooh, you've done opium. What was it like?
>
>I confess, it was my favorite. Very dream-like. A bit scary in retrospect: I
>fell down on a beach and cut myself, and didn't notice until I saw the blood.
>Hmm. From descriptions I've heard of Valium, it might be a bit like that.
>Everything's nice and slow and remarkably agreeable.
I myself have smoked opium, and hated every minute of it. It felt like
becoming a one-celled animal, and at the time it seemed it was going to be
eternal in a really unpleasant way.
Understand, this entire exchange is an exercise in fiction _pour encourager
les autres_. Neither Will nor I actually know anything about illegal drugs
other than what we read in magazine articles.
P Nielsen Hayden
>Prozac: Probably saved my life, but I hesitate to count it as a mind-
>altering drug (and wouldn't have even thought of it if Patrick hadn't
>brought it up). Depression is mind-altering. Prozac just restored me to
>whatever level of sanity is normal for me.
What this illustrates, of course, is that some of the most "mind-altering"
chemicals tend to be manufactured by our own bodies. I'm unclear on why
agonizing depression is supposed to be virtously "natural" while the effects
of akaloids that humans have cultivated for thousands of years are evilly
"artificial."
Kristopher/EOS
>
> eosl...@net-link.net wrote:
>> Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>>
>>> Me, I had most disturbing visions just staying up late at
>>> night and staring out into the abyss. It was very clear
>>> to everyone, myself included, I was Not A Candidate for
>>> mind-altering drugs.
>>
>> Which is what I had to convince a certain subset of my
>> friends of. People for whom such experiences are great
>> fun and/or hihgly insightful seem to have a very hard
>> time grasping the concept that they might not be so for
>> others.
>
> There's a larger principle there. It's the inability to
> understand that tastes differ, which is probably a subset
> of solipsism. (ObSF: Iain Banks' _Against A Dark
> Background_.) It's highly annoying, and rarely more so
> than if you happen to be a college student who'd rather
> abstain.
Solipsism seems to be the non-conscious default setting of
most people from 12 to 25, at least in my experience.
>> The one time I have been truly drunk, it was pretty much
>> accidental, and I hated it. I knew I was drunk, I knew
>> it would go away, and I was still scared witless by the
>> sensations, by the altered state of mind.
>>
>> I know, without a doubt, what a truly mind-altering drug
>> would be like for me.
>
> I have no desire to convert you the joys of Fun With
> Controlled Substances, but in fact experiences with one
> drug don't necessarily transfer to experiences with other
> drugs. From my own, admittedly limited experience:
>
> Alcohol: Fun if I'm already in a reasonably good mood.
>
> Pot: Several trials produced no noticeable effect.
>
> Laughing gas: Never again. This was not for fun, but in
> a dentist's office.
> <snip
>
> Prozac: Probably saved my life, but I hesitate to count it
> as a mind-altering drug (and wouldn't have even thought of
> it if Patrick hadn't brought it up). Depression is
> mind-altering. Prozac just restored me to whatever level
> of sanity is normal for me.
Prozac has been recommended to me in a non-clinical setting
(ie, by a psychologist, even though I wasn't seeing him in
any professional capacity), but besides the money factor,
I'm confused enough as it is without wondering when it's
the drug talking, and I don't like the idea of having my
mind altered even if it is, according to some, broken.
I'm not saying that no one should use Prozac, btw.
Kristopher/EOS
Will Shetterly
>>Did you catch my list of drugs that I tried and found wanting? I'd love
>to
>>hear what you think works.
>
>You're moving the goalposts. You made a categorical assertion that drugs
>don't improve creativity for anyone.
Did I? I made a suggestion, in a conversation about creativity, that people who
think they need drugs should consider changing their lives. I said drugs didn't
help my creativity. Seems to me you're running as hard as you can with your
goalpost and claiming mine is moving.
>I pointed out that "medical need" is a socially
>constructed category, and to a very great extent a function of very
>arbitrary choices. You appear to be quite determinedly not getting this
>point. Please do try.
But, forgive me for being blunt, this hasn't been the topic, and it's not a
topic I'm interested in. Some people have good reasons for using drugs. Where's
the controversy in that? I love a good argument. This one doesn't excite me. If
you want, I'll happily say I'm sorry you thought I said that no one should ever
use drugs that affect the mind.
>>That's amusing. I feel like a homeless guy yelling at the wealthy landlords
>to
>>get out of the stock market.
>
>Yes, we get that. I'm suggesting that your self-image and the effects of
>your rhetoric are, in this matter, at some variance.
Must be. Thanks for clearing that up.
cheers,
Will Shetterly
>I myself have smoked opium, and hated every minute of it. It felt like
>becoming a one-celled animal, and at the time it seemed it was going to
>be
>eternal in a really unpleasant way.
I understand that. How do you feel about laughing gas at the dentist? Rachel
hated it. I rather enjoy it. Maybe simply because it reminds me of the wilder
days of my youth.
Yr. one-celled pal,
Karen Lofstrom
: If you don't mean it for her, can you also mean it for people for whom, say,
: Prozac turned out to be the difference between night and day?
I think he meant people who were self-prescribing, and using street
drugs. Some of whom might actually benefit from consulting a doctor
and getting put on something legal, with fewer side effects. I believe
I read somewhere that a great many alcoholics were depressed and
self-medicating with alcohol.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Inspected and found apparently free of sweet potato weevils in
accordance with Part 3 of Chapter 12 of Title 3 of the Louisiana
Revised Statutes
Heather Anne Nicoll
> I think he meant people who were self-prescribing, and using street
> drugs. Some of whom might actually benefit from consulting a doctor
> and getting put on something legal, with fewer side effects. I believe
> I read somewhere that a great many alcoholics were depressed and
> self-medicating with alcohol.
It's still coming across as a tribal taboo, rather than a clearly
presented position.
Six and ninety ways? Or was it the other way around?
(Now I'm trying to remember who it was who said 'tribal' this weekend
such that the concept of certain taboos and behaviours as an identifying
us/them marker for patterns within a social group is stuck in my head as
a useful meme; I have a sneaking suspicion it was Patrick Nielsen
Hayden, which means that my reiteration of same here feels strangely
redundant.)
--
Heather Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.dslonramp.net/~darkhawk/
I understand about indecision, I don't care if I get behind
People living in competition; all I want is to have my peace of mind.
- Boston, "Peace of Mind"
Ero...@aol.com
anga...@sympatico.ca wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Apr 2000 13:41:33 GMT, Ero...@aol.com <Ero...@aol.com>
scripsit:
But I didn't. Lucy Kemnitzer did. I think your software hiccuped.
Erol K. Bayburt
Ero...@aol.com (mail drop)
Er...@ix.netcom.com (surfboard)
Will Shetterly
>Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
>> I think he meant people who were self-prescribing, and using street
>> drugs. Some of whom might actually benefit from consulting a doctor
>> and getting put on something legal, with fewer side effects. I believe
>> I read somewhere that a great many alcoholics were depressed and
>> self-medicating with alcohol.
>
>It's still coming across as a tribal taboo, rather than a clearly
>presented position.
If it's a tribal taboo, it's one that I broke with vigor. As for it not being a
"clearly presented position," well, it's just my opinion tossed out on the
internet. I wasn't trying to make a "clearly presented position."
Despite that, I wish the people who are objecting to it would cite a few cases
of creative people who were helped by using mind-altering drugs. I liked the
try with Coleridge. The list of writers using alcohol or other drugs is long.
There must be a few happy writers out there, a few people who were objectively
helped in creative ways. If my doubt about the suggestion to use drugs to
enhance creativity annoys you, poke at the holes in it. My feelings won't be
hurt, honestly.
Here, I'll toss you Ken Kesey. I loved ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST when I
was fifteen or so. Kesey was a great believer in the creative potential of
drugs. I have no idea whether they ultimately harmed him, so he's available for
your side. And there's Aldous Huxley--DOORS OF PERCEPTION is a great book, and
I never heard that he was driven to suicide, or that any of his organs failed,
or that his creativity dried up while he did more and more of the mind-altering
chemicals of his choice. This is an SF group--someone should bring up Dick and
Burroughs, though the evidence seems a little trickier to interpret in both
cases. Anyone else? Any more thoughts on any of the folks I've mentioned?
cheers,
Heather Anne Nicoll
> If it's a tribal taboo, it's one that I broke with vigor. As for it not
> being a "clearly presented position," well, it's just my opinion tossed
> out on the internet. I wasn't trying to make a "clearly presented
> position."
If you're expressing your opinion unclearly, then you're going to run
into little arguments about the holes in same.
> Despite that, I wish the people who are objecting to it would cite a few
> cases of creative people who were helped by using mind-altering drugs. I
> liked the try with Coleridge. The list of writers using alcohol or other
> drugs is long.
If I let my natural brain chemistry run unchecked, I get nothing
accompished because I'm in a semi-autistic depressive black hole in the
universe. Nothing gets accomplished, because nothing matters, and
there's no point in bothering; there's barely even a person inside my
skull to notice that the person in my skull isn't doing anything.
If I medicate conventionally to make my brain chemistry 'normal', my
writing, to put it bluntly and colloquially, sucks big moose. It loses
the depths of meaning and the psychological edges of the people I write
about in a sort of blurred haze.
It's the edge between incapacity and unintelligibility that *I* have to
walk. I've spent a lot of time rummaging around in the back corners of
my mind in order to figure out what triggers will fix individual
imbalances and knock me off that edge. I can certainly imagine other
people using other means to do the exact same thing, instead of using my
particular cocktail of music, alcohol, caffeine, human interactions,
mathematics, painkillers, poetry, music, reading, chess, writing
computer code, good SF, brain candy SF, playing with catlings,
gardening, books on sociology and philosophy, music, major league
baseball, bicycling, talking to trees (but they don't listen to me),
caring for sharp pointed objects, shouting incoherently in utter
frustration, and did I mention music?
The fact that my actual chemical state-of-mind-altering substances
(alcohol, caffeine, and ibuprofen or the odd prescription opiate) are
legal doesn't change the fact that they're mind-altering substances. (A
simple painkiller is a mind-altering substance if one's subject to
chronic pain or migraine, even if it may not be in the techincal meaning
of 'mind-altering substance'.) The fact that I don't ingest any
chemicals when I self-medicate with my CD collection, my voice, my
flute, or my keyboard doesn't change the fact that my chemistry changes,
and that I find that chemistry-change and mind-change useful.
And now, for my least favorite mind-altering drug: allergy medication.
I've been packing to move for several hours, and can no longer breathe
for dust. Therefore, I shall take a pill and render myself an utter
imbecile for twelve hours. Fortunately, all Mongo will need to do is
carry crates of books around, so being an absolute moron due to drug
effects will probably not be too much of a tragedy.
> There must be a few happy writers out there, a few people who were
> objectively helped in creative ways. If my doubt about the suggestion to
> use drugs to enhance creativity annoys you, poke at the holes in it. My
> feelings won't be hurt, honestly.
I like a good argument, and, as was pointed out elsewhere, don't argue
because my 'feelings are hurt' or refrain from same for fear that
someone else might get his nose out of joint over same. This isn't one
I particularly care about, though, aside from pointing out that PNH was
being rather accurate about the gaps in the statement.
I tend to object to things that seem to me to be overgeneralizations as
a matter of principle. Whether it's One True Wayism or just sloppy
thinking, it has a bad tendency to irk my backbrain. Hence my
interjection into this thread; even if I agreed with you I'd be arguing
with your phrasings at this point. ;)
Kristopher/EOS
>
> Kristopher/EOS wrote:
>> Prozac has been recommended to me in a non-clinical setting
>> (ie, by a psychologist, even though I wasn't seeing him in
>> any professional capacity), but besides the money factor,
>> I'm confused enough as it is without wondering when it's
>> the drug talking, and I don't like the idea of having my
>> mind altered even if it is, according to some, broken.
>
> another close friend of mine (me being the point of
> connection between them) was being perscribed
> antidepressants, and was having similar concerns --
> particularly about the possibility that the
> antidepressants would make her actual mental issues "go
> away" rather than actually getting them resolved: The
> antidepressants don't _solve_ anything.
Part of my point. All the reasons to be upset are still
there. I don't like the currently popular viewpoint that
says that if you're depressed, something must be wrong
with you. It just never occurs to a lot of people that
some of us actually have something to be upset about,
and so we're told "take a pill, and stop being so sad."
> They help you get to a mental state where they're
> manageable so you can solve them yourself. In other
> words, it's not "the drug talking", it's helping you
> see things in a slightly different light but, once
> there, still _you_ dealing with the world.
And what of fundamentally unresolvable problems?
Anyway, I've put so much effort into peeling back the
layers and burning off the subjectivities, trying to
keep a grip and filter out my own deep quirks in
perception and cognition that there are times when I
have trouble not doubting the sanity of people who are
simply happy.
I'm not a "happy person." I never have been. There
are things that temporarily distract me, a state that
others might refer to as "happy." But that fundamental
baseline state of unhappiness, or dissatisfaction, is
as central to who I am as anything else.
A drug that made me happy, or rather made my baseline
state one of happiness, would make me someone else
entirely.
> Back to earlier points in this thread, I'd imagine the
> same is often true with "recreational" mind-altering
> drugs. I gather, for example, that some drugs tend to
> help one see the world in such a way that every single
> thought is greatly and wonderfully interesting, down
> to "there's a dirt spot on the wall". There are some
> ways that I don't want to be helped to see the world,
> thankyouverymuch. (And some amusing ways that I can
> see the world _without_ help, I'm told.)
*nod* There are some thoughts that shouldn't
be interesting anyway.
Kristopher/EOS
Jo Walton
wshet...@aol.comSNIP "Will Shetterly" writes:
> Did you catch my list of drugs that I tried and found wanting? I'd love to hear
> what you think works.
Ginseng.
I don't know if it really works or if it's psychosomatic, but, um, when
you're talking about creativity, it doesn't really matter, does it?
Actually I don't think it enhances creativity, creativity comes free,
but I do think drinking tea with ginseng helps me focus.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia; Poetry; RASFW FAQ; etc.
my fantasy novel :The King's Peace: coming from Tor in October
sample chapters on http://www.tor.com/sampleKingsPeace.html
Jo Walton
p...@panix.com "P Nielsen Hayden" writes:
> On 27 Apr 2000 03:51:22 GMT, Will Shetterly <wshet...@aol.comSNIP> wrote:
> >raks...@my-deja.com wrote:
> >
> >>Ooh, you've done opium. What was it like?
> >
> >I confess, it was my favorite. Very dream-like. A bit scary in retrospect: I
> >fell down on a beach and cut myself, and didn't notice until I saw the blood.
> >Hmm. From descriptions I've heard of Valium, it might be a bit like that.
> >Everything's nice and slow and remarkably agreeable.
>
> I myself have smoked opium, and hated every minute of it. It felt like
> becoming a one-celled animal, and at the time it seemed it was going to be
> eternal in a really unpleasant way.
I have had prescription morphine for pain, and it felt as if everything
was slowed way down, so this would seem to be a constant. It also felt
as if the pain was over to the left a bit and coloured green, I lay and
watched it rippling for a while. It was very pleasant, I can see why
people do it for fun. I have had no desire to try it or its cousins
again, certainly nothing to compare to chocolate cravings or the squid
craving I had when I was pregnant.
James Nicoll
>>altering drug (and wouldn't have even thought of it if Patrick hadn't
>>brought it up). Depression is mind-altering. Prozac just restored me to
>>whatever level of sanity is normal for me.
>
>chemicals tend to be manufactured by our own bodies. I'm unclear on why
>agonizing depression is supposed to be virtously "natural" while the effects
>of akaloids that humans have cultivated for thousands of years are evilly
>"artificial."
I thought there had been studies showing that a fair number of
depressed people are actually -lacking- in neurochemicals which cause
the majority of people to be needlessly upbeat. It isn't so much that
they are being drugged by their own body into depression but that unlike
the majority of people, they are not being naturally drugged out of it
and have an accurate picture the world as it is really is. Given the
vaious fates of depressed people, there an argument for the utility
of mild doping, natural or otherwise.
ObFiction:
There's a funny novel about a baseball team on its way to the
World Series. The team is made up entirely of depressives who each feel
they are frauds and don't belong on the team, where they can only weigh
down their team-mates, who of course aren't frauds and belong there.
Lois Tilton
>> I myself have smoked opium, and hated every minute of it. It felt like
>> becoming a one-celled animal, and at the time it seemed it was going to be
>> eternal in a really unpleasant way.
Anyone for absinthe?
--
LT
Written In Venom -- Wildside Press, April 2000?
Jonathan W Hendry
> Brooks Moses wrote:
>>
>> Kristopher/EOS wrote:
>>> Prozac has been recommended to me in a non-clinical setting
>>> (ie, by a psychologist, even though I wasn't seeing him in
>>> any professional capacity), but besides the money factor,
>>> I'm confused enough as it is without wondering when it's
>>> the drug talking, and I don't like the idea of having my
>>> mind altered even if it is, according to some, broken.
>>
>> Reminds me of what a friend of mine once told me, when
>> another close friend of mine (me being the point of
>> connection between them) was being perscribed
>> antidepressants, and was having similar concerns --
>> particularly about the possibility that the
>> antidepressants would make her actual mental issues "go
>> away" rather than actually getting them resolved: The
>> antidepressants don't _solve_ anything.
> Part of my point. All the reasons to be upset are still
> there. I don't like the currently popular viewpoint that
> says that if you're depressed, something must be wrong
> with you. It just never occurs to a lot of people that
> some of us actually have something to be upset about,
> and so we're told "take a pill, and stop being so sad."
The problems is that depressed people will just wallow
in their problems, rather than fixing them. The meds
help stop the wallowing, so you can fix the problems.
It probably *won't* stop you from being sad.
>> They help you get to a mental state where they're
>> manageable so you can solve them yourself. In other
>> words, it's not "the drug talking", it's helping you
>> see things in a slightly different light but, once
>> there, still _you_ dealing with the world.
> And what of fundamentally unresolvable problems?
Then it'll help keep you from wallowing in self-pity,
which can be perversely seductive.
Erika Peterson
> I thought there had been studies showing that a fair number of
>depressed people are actually -lacking- in neurochemicals which cause
>the majority of people to be needlessly upbeat. It isn't so much that
>they are being drugged by their own body into depression but that unlike
>the majority of people, they are not being naturally drugged out of it
>and have an accurate picture the world as it is really is.
Actually, the evidence for "depressive realism" is slim and shaky.
The best evidence comes from a series of studies in which depressed
and non-depressed subjects had to estimate their control over what was
(unbeknownst to them) a completely random phenomenon. For example,
there would be a light flickering on and off, and the subjects had a
switch they could turn on and off, and they had to estimate what
percentage of the time did the switch control the light.
Non-depressed subjects overestimated their amount of control;
depressed subjects were more accurate.
However, there are tons of other studies using other types of tasks or
questions that show that depressed people can be unrealistically
negative.
EP
Kristopher/EOS
>
>> What this illustrates, of course, is that some of the
>> most "mind-altering"chemicals tend to be manufactured
>> by our own bodies. I'm unclear on why agonizing
>> depression is supposed to be virtously "natural" while
>> the effects of akaloids that humans have cultivated
>> for thousands of years are evilly "artificial."
>
> number of depressed people are actually -lacking- in
> neurochemicals which cause the majority of people to
> be needlessly upbeat. It isn't so much that they are
> being drugged by their own body into depression but
> that unlike the majority of people, they are not
> being naturally drugged out of it and have an
> accurate picture the world as it is really is.
That's pretty much my opinion on the whole matter.
Of course, you expressed it far better than I did.
I hate the fact that it takes me three drafts to be
eloquent most of the time.
Kristopher/EOS
Dan Goodman
normal state of consciousness.
I suspect that whatever your normal state of mind/emotion is, there are
people taking illicit drugs to achieve it.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
James Nicoll
That's only because I have been online longer than you,
post more often [I think] and so have more practice. You'll notice
that because I am dead lazy, my posts are often first drafts and
have stupid errors proof reading would have caught [Often dropped
words, esp the word 'not'. Some form of Murphy's Law, I guess].
Part of the reason my reviews are book-a-day affairs is
because I am a sprint writer and don't have the writing stamina
for longer essays. It's worse than that, even: 16 years in retail
has stuck my mind about two weeks in the future so that when I am
doing a review on Book A, I am also thinking about Book C or D,
limiting my focus. Note that the list of markets for -fiction- suited
to sprint writing probably would fit on the back of a smallish post
card in large print and much of what I might say at long length
won't fit.
There are a lot of very gloomy people in my family[1], myself
sometimes included, but gallows humour keeps us from hanging our selves
too often. That and a morbid curiousity to see whether our worse
expectations will be exceeded or not. On the whole the 20th Century
ended a lot better than I expected. There's joy in depression done
right. There's not an infected gut wound that doesn't have a joke in
it somewhere.
James Nicoll
1: I think 900 years ago, for example, the folks in my mother's family
who weren't depressives headed south from France to the Byzantine Empire
and the surrounding regions because, hey, it's sunny in Antioch[2] and
the gloomy ones instead decided that sunlight would distract them from
how much life sucks and headed to Scotland instead[3]. After that, Nova
Scotia beckoned...
2: This branch was slaughtered, man, woman and child, during the Crusades.
They had nice tans, though.
3: This is my theory about the settlement of the rest of GB and Scandinavia
as well, actually.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Shetterly) wrote:
> This is an SF group--someone should bring up Dick and
>Burroughs, though the evidence seems a little trickier to interpret in both
>cases. Anyone else? Any more thoughts on any of the folks I've mentioned?
Okay, the fact that Phillip K. Dick was able to produce coherent
sentences at all was a triumph: so whatever he did, I won't second
guess. But I would hate to think that his state of mind might be
offered up as a template for other writers.
Burroughs, on the other hand, is so far overrated that it's
amazing: his stuff is not only bad, it's evil: and he was an awful
awful man whose awfulness spilled over in great slimy waves into
his work. So whatever he did, we shouldn't.
On the other hand, I remember as a girl in the late sixties
reading issue after issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction that
seemed to be entirely inspired by psychedelics, and a lot of that
was good reading.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
Shetterly) wrote:
>Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com wrote:
>
>>I myself have smoked opium, and hated every minute of it. It felt like
>>becoming a one-celled animal, and at the time it seemed it was going to
>>be
>>eternal in a really unpleasant way.
>
>I understand that. How do you feel about laughing gas at the dentist? Rachel
>hated it. I rather enjoy it. Maybe simply because it reminds me of the wilder
>days of my youth.
>
>Yr. one-celled pal,
I would think that laughing gas might be fun someplace else, but
at the dentist's I want to be all there and experiencing every
moment as it really is. I'd do without pain relief altogether
except I can't (I've tried: I can do without it everywhere else,
not the mouth). My dentist now has this tv thing that shows you
what's going on in there and I wish he'd use it the whole time.
When I had my carpal tunnel surgery I made the surgeon give me
back my glasses and tell me what all the little squiggles inside
my wrist were. When I had an emergancy cesarean and they had to
use a general anesthetic I was messed up for years, compulsively
reading everything there was to read about the procedure and the
conditions that made it necessary: turned out that was
unnecessary, as the first time I saw a really detailed film of it
I was all fixed -- but that didn't happen till I was in the
earliest stages of a long gentle labor with the second kid.
Anyway, the point is, that intellectualization is my pain relief
of choice.
I have had altered consciousness from pain itself: it was
interesting, and almost pleasant, in its way, when it was
something limited and not frightening: enough so I can almost
understand the sun dancers, though not Fakir Musafar, who is too
exhibitionist for my taste (the sun dancers have a whole context
they do it in that makes it less exhibitionist than it might seem
at first glance).
Lucy Kemnitzer
Russell Wallace
> And then there is the problem of the unwanted side-effect of damping
> creativity that a number of drugs have -- and then getting your
> physician to believe that your creative faculties are indeed important
> and that it is a significant reduction in your quality of life when you
> can't write/draw/paint/etc. especially when your creative endeavors
> aren't your primary source of income.
A very good point, thank you.
For me, nicotine is worth a pretty substantial boost in effective
intelligence - enough that I'm willing to take the hit in expected
lifespan. I get annoyed that my brain can't function at peak output
without it - but you've reminded me I should be thankful that at least
the stuff is legal. I'll keep that thought.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mailto:mano...@iol.ie
Russell Wallace
>
> In article <20000424193718...@ng-fl1.aol.com>,
> Will Shetterly <wshet...@aol.comSNIP> wrote:
> >And let me be perfectly clear in turn: Ideas that you come up with when you're
> >drunk, high, stoned, tripping, or in the altered state of your choice are much
> >less likely to be as interesting as the ideas that you'll come up with when
> >your mind is functioning without any chemical impairment.
>
> Sure, you've turned down the unconscious filtering, moved it into the
> conscious domain. You're seeing candidate ideas you ordinarily wouldn't
> have, and any given one is, with probability exceeding 0.9, crap.
Generally speaking I think this is certainly the case - though sometimes
a gem may come through that would normally have been filtered out, as
you point out. (A few of my character and plot ideas for roleplaying
games have come to me while drunk, and proved very good.)
I had one interesting example of the reverse, though. It was in college
(studying computer science, I'm a programmer by profession). I was
working on a certain technical problem I thought I had an interesting
answer to (basically a program to analyze other programs for certain
properties). I'd been banging away at this on and off for a few weeks,
then I spent an evening with some friends drinking beer, smoking pot and
listening to Jean-Michelle Jarre, during the course of which I thought
about the problem I'd been working on. In that state of mind I could
suddenly *see* the patterns of logic, and trying to make them fit, I
could see why they wouldn't and couldn't, why the approach I'd been
taking was fundamentally unworkable - the problem might be solvable, but
if so it would have to be by a different method.
(And yes, that conclusion stood up to cold analysis the next morning.)
Erika Peterson
>And then there is the problem of the unwanted side-effect of damping
>creativity that a number of drugs have -- and then getting your
>physician to believe that your creative faculties are indeed important
>and that it is a significant reduction in your quality of life when you
>can't write/draw/paint/etc. especially when your creative endeavors
>aren't your primary source of income.
Now, along those same lines, anyone think there's anything to the
whole "tormented artist" stereotype? Does emotional distress enhance
either the idea generation or writing phase of things?
I'm beginning to fear that perhaps it does enhance idea generation.
I've been happier and mellower in the past eight months than I've been
in a long, long time (thanks to life changes, BTW, not
anti-depressants -- not that anti-depressants aren't often a good
thing, I just wanted to make it clear that I was switching the topic
from drugs) and it certainly hasn't hurt my writing technique. In
fact, I've made great strides, because I finally have TIME to work at
it. But new ideas don't come with the same frequency or the same
hallucinatory vividness and sense of importance, as they did when I
was miserable.
I'll bet this fits in with the whole "mystical vs. practical"
discussion that Will and Patricia were having in another thread. Up
until now, I've been relying on the mystical route to ideas, but I'm
sure there's a very practical system out there for putting yourself in
the right place, time, and frame of mind to generate ideas. I just
don't know what it is yet.
EP
Matthew F Johnson
(snip)
>
> Despite that, I wish the people who are objecting to it would cite a few cases
> of creative people who were helped by using mind-altering drugs. I liked the
> try with Coleridge. The list of writers using alcohol or other drugs is long.
> There must be a few happy writers out there, a few people who were objectively
> helped in creative ways. If my doubt about the suggestion to use drugs to
> enhance creativity annoys you, poke at the holes in it. My feelings won't be
> hurt, honestly.
>
> Here, I'll toss you Ken Kesey. I loved ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST when I
> was fifteen or so. Kesey was a great believer in the creative potential of
> drugs. I have no idea whether they ultimately harmed him, so he's available for
> your side. And there's Aldous Huxley--DOORS OF PERCEPTION is a great book, and
> I never heard that he was driven to suicide, or that any of his organs failed,
> or that his creativity dried up while he did more and more of the mind-altering
> chemicals of his choice. This is an SF group--someone should bring up Dick and
> Burroughs, though the evidence seems a little trickier to interpret in both
> cases. Anyone else? Any more thoughts on any of the folks I've mentioned?
I've never gotten story ideas while stoned or drunk, though a few
have come to me in dreams. What I have received, the few times I've smoked
pot (and no, I wasn't "experimenting"; I did not smoke a placebo joint the
next night to act as a control) is thoughts on technical stuff -- my
definition of what a three-dimensional character came to me that way, for
instance.
--
Matthew Johnson
"If you can bring nothing to this place
but your carcass, keep out."
-- William Carlos Williams
Matthew F Johnson
people should check out the chapter "Witty Ticcy Ray" in
Sacks' _The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat_. The title
subject has concerns about the effects of his anti-Tourette's
medication that are very similar to those being raised here.
Kristopher/EOS
(eosl...@net-link.net)
writes: > Brooks Moses wrote: >> >> Kristopher/EOS wrote:
>>> Prozac has been recommended to me in a non-clinical setting
>>> (ie, by a psychologist, even though I wasn't seeing him in
>>> any professional capacity), but besides the money factor,
>>> I'm confused enough as it is without wondering when it's
>>> the drug talking, and I don't like the idea of having my
>>> mind altered even if it is, according to some, broken.
>>
>> Reminds me of what a friend of mine once told me, when
>> another close friend of mine (me being the point of
>> connection between them) was being perscribed
>> antidepressants, and was having similar concerns --
>> particularly about the possibility that the
>> antidepressants would make her actual mental issues "go
>> away" rather than actually getting them resolved: The
>> antidepressants don't _solve_ anything.
>
> Part of my point. All the reasons to be upset are still
> there. I don't like the currently popular viewpoint that
> says that if you're depressed, something must be wrong
> with you. It just never occurs to a lot of people that
> some of us actually have something to be upset about,
> and so we're told "take a pill, and stop being so sad."
>
>> They help you get to a mental state where they're
>> manageable so you can solve them yourself. In other
>> words, it's not "the drug talking", it's helping you
>> see things in a slightly different light but, once
>> there, still _you_ dealing with the world.
>
> And what of fundamentally unresolvable problems?
>
Jo Walton
lti...@enteract.com "Lois Tilton" writes:
> Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >> I myself have smoked opium, and hated every minute of it. It felt like
> >> becoming a one-celled animal, and at the time it seemed it was going to be
> >> eternal in a really unpleasant way.
I DID NOT WRITE THAT.
And furthermore, I haven't done it.
Hey, Ms. Tilton, when people are admitting doing illegal things, it's
really even more important than normal to keep the attributions correct,
don't you think?
P Nielsen Hayden
>p...@panix.com (P Nielsen Hayden) wrote:
>>On 27 Apr 2000 03:45:10 GMT, Will Shetterly <wshet...@aol.comSNIP> wrote:
>>>Did you catch my list of drugs that I tried and found wanting? I'd love
>>>to hear what you think works.
>>
>>You're moving the goalposts. You made a categorical assertion that drugs
>>don't improve creativity for anyone.
>
>Did I?
Yes.
>I made a suggestion, in a conversation about creativity, that people who
>think they need drugs should consider changing their lives.
No, you made a categorical assertion. You may have meant something more
moderate, but that wasn't reflected in the words you actually typed.
>But, forgive me for being blunt, this hasn't been the topic, and it's not a
>topic I'm interested in.
I'm unclear that you're the arbiter of what "the topic" is. If, in a thread
about pacing, I were to make an ill-considered remark about Hollywood
screenwriters, you might well take issue with it, whether or not the words
"Hollywood screenwriters" appeared in the "Subject:" header.
>Some people have good reasons for using drugs. Where's the controversy in
>that? I love a good argument.
I like a good conversation. Arguments can be good or bad. Usually good
conversations and good arguments feature people who are willing to own up to
what they've said.
>This one doesn't excite me.
Points off for posturing. More points off for posturing unconvincingly.
--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
David Silas
James Nicoll wrote in message <8e9a2o$jp3$1...@watserv3.uwaterloo.ca>...
> ObFiction:
>
> There's a funny novel about a baseball team on its way to the
>World Series. The team is made up entirely of depressives who each feel
>they are frauds and don't belong on the team, where they can only weigh
>down their team-mates, who of course aren't frauds and belong there.
Carkeet, David. The Greatest Slump of All Time. (1984)
A wonderfully funny depressing book.
P Nielsen Hayden
>P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>: Prozac turned out to be the difference between night and day?
>
>drugs. Some of whom might actually benefit from consulting a doctor
>and getting put on something legal, with fewer side effects.
Of course they would. Do we really need to go into why some people don't?
The first and foremost undesirable "side effect" of taking drugs illegally
is exposure to legal trouble. In many cases, that's the only "side effect."
Narcoleptics take a variety of stimulants with known negative "side
effects," and the fact that they get the stuff legally doesn't magically
make those "side effects" go away, nor are the "side effects" worse if an
undiagnosed narcoleptic manages to get the same drugs on the black market.
It helps to remember that, really, there are no "side effects"; there are
only effects.
P Nielsen Hayden
<dark...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Karen Lofstrom <lofs...@lava.net> wrote:
>> I think he meant people who were self-prescribing, and using street
>> drugs. Some of whom might actually benefit from consulting a doctor
>> and getting put on something legal, with fewer side effects. I believe
>> I read somewhere that a great many alcoholics were depressed and
>> self-medicating with alcohol.
>
>It's still coming across as a tribal taboo, rather than a clearly
>presented position.
>
>Six and ninety ways? Or was it the other way around?
>
>(Now I'm trying to remember who it was who said 'tribal' this weekend
>such that the concept of certain taboos and behaviours as an identifying
>us/them marker for patterns within a social group is stuck in my head as
>a useful meme; I have a sneaking suspicion it was Patrick Nielsen
>Hayden, which means that my reiteration of same here feels strangely
>redundant.)
You are correct. It was on a panel at Minicon, though I forget which one.
David Silas
<20000427040000...@ng-fl1.aol.com>...
>
>Here, I'll toss you Ken Kesey. I loved ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST when
I
>was fifteen or so. Kesey was a great believer in the creative potential of
>drugs. I have no idea whether they ultimately harmed him, so he's available
for
>your side. And there's Aldous Huxley--DOORS OF PERCEPTION is a great book,
and
>I never heard that he was driven to suicide, or that any of his organs
failed,
>or that his creativity dried up while he did more and more of the
mind-altering
>chemicals of his choice. This is an SF group--someone should bring up Dick
and
>Burroughs, though the evidence seems a little trickier to interpret in both
>cases. Anyone else? Any more thoughts on any of the folks I've mentioned?
Huxley is an interesting case in point. He spent decades experimenting with
chemical means to achieve the altered state of consciousness he considered
necessary to the creative process. Yet, ironically, he seems to have been
able to slip into a profoundly altered state every time he sat down to
write -- but was unaware of it. Just as he was unaware of the mundane tasks
he performed while in that altered state.
Brenda
Erika Peterson wrote:
> Now, along those same lines, anyone think there's anything to the
> whole "tormented artist" stereotype? Does emotional distress enhance
> either the idea generation or writing phase of things?
>
I am sure this is a YMMV thing. Some people write much better and faster
under stress, either internal or external. God created some of us to be war
correspondents. I consider myself fragile and delicate, a flower to be
pampered in a sheltered nook before it can blossom. I am -far- more
productive when everything around me is mundane and calm and happy.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough, author of DOORS OF DEATH AND LIFE
From Tor Books in May 2000
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
LK
<eosl...@net-link.net> wrote:
>Prozac has been recommended to me in a non-clinical setting
>(ie, by a psychologist, even though I wasn't seeing him in
>any professional capacity), but besides the money factor,
>I'm confused enough as it is without wondering when it's
>the drug talking, and I don't like the idea of having my
>mind altered even if it is, according to some, broken.
It's not broken, it's more like misfiring. Use a automobile analogy,
it still works but not as well as it should and noiser. Not an
all-encompassing analogy but much better than broken, like a vase.
Personal experience example: In the accompanying literature it says
Paxil may take 3-4 weeks to be become effective. It took 20 minutes
in my brain. I was actively aware of the process. It's remarkable.
Whereas 20 minutes earlier I had problems making a decsion, getting
stuck reveiwing options and second guessing myself, that was normal
decision making pattern, which granted saved me from a lot of mistakes
but dragged me down.
So 20 min after the first pill, I made a decision without a great deal
of thought. "Hey, that was easy," I Shrugged my shoulders and went
on. Over and over during a 15 min period I noticed, I could almost
say "felt" the synapes working differently and along with that, as is
my wont, came an image of the gap being leap directly by happy
bio-chemicals confident of their destination, instead of the little
chemicals getting confused about which way to jump, which nueron was
the correct receptor. And that translates into less wasted energy
worry or feeling down and more confidence and it helps a bit with
control appetite, less nervous eating.
In many cases, brain chemistry can be thought of like homormonal
levels. Sometimes what's needed is only a kickstart to remind the
brain to up the level of some combinaion of brain chemicals. I say
that because I've reduce my dosage over 1-1/2 years. And in my
limited discussions with health providers, they report hearing similar
stories of patients needing to get over the hump and their reducing
dosage and/or no longer needing "supplements." For other steady
doses are needed.
We're all born different and our needs change. And it'd be an area of
reasearch to look at changes in diet and food additives and other
environmental factors, to find if these brain differences are normal
variations or aggravated by the above. If we can know the answer.
LK
LK
wrote:
>Back to earlier points in this thread, I'd imagine the same is often
>true with "recreational" mind-altering drugs. I gather, for example,
>that some drugs tend to help one see the world in such a way that every
>single thought is greatly and wonderfully interesting, down to "there's
>a dirt spot on the wall". There are some ways that I don't want to be
>helped to see the world, thankyouverymuch. (And some amusing ways that
>I can see the world _without_ help, I'm told.)
>
That could also suffer from the same thing that happens when you
dream. I often create/view eleborate stories, beinging, middle, end,
while I'm asleep and I know these would make great stories but to
remember more than a sight or a few sentences byt the time I wake up
and the rush to write it down and make it into evoking words...
Frustrating.
The experience maybe creative but what you can transfer to other
mediums for communication can be limited. And as with abstract art or
still life painting still subject much interpretation.
eLK
Heather Anne Nicoll
> Now, along those same lines, anyone think there's anything to the
> whole "tormented artist" stereotype? Does emotional distress enhance
> either the idea generation or writing phase of things?
Hrm. I'd say that the idea generation works best for me when I have two
spaces whose phases are enough out of synch that it generates
interesting interference.
I get a number of interesting juxtapositions out of dreamspace, and I
actually retain some of them when I'm awake. Some are sparked by waking
events or thoughts. I'm not entirely certain -where- seeds come from,
actually; later refinements of story can be either unfoldings of a leaf,
or sparked by something unrelated but parallel, or rummaging around in
the underbelly of a problem.
If I'm too distanced from whatever part of my psyche is most in synch
with the particular interference pattern I'm looking at, I can't read
the pattern or interpret it; it doesn't have enough in common with my
state of mind to be meaningful. (For example, when I hit a deep
depressive trough, about the only thing I can relate to is an album
called "Silence", which has in one of its tracks the utterly cheering
lyric, "I know silence better than anyone." It's a cointoss whether
listening to Silence cheers me up by being music (and actually having
two or three upbeat songs on it towards the end) or settles the
depression by being exactly its state of mind.)
I need to have some contact with the part of me that can only relate to
Silence if I need to write about that state of mind, or if the idea I'm
working with includes that problem. I can't -be- there, because when
I'm there I'm generally curled up into a foetal ball listening to Tara
MacLean.
Being 'too happy' means that I'm not paying attention to the edges of
modes for interference; I'm paying attention for reinforcement, which
doesn't provide with many useful hooks. Story has conflict in it
-somewhere-. If I can't find the conflict in my gut, I can't write it
so that it'll get someone else in the gut.
> I'll bet this fits in with the whole "mystical vs. practical"
> discussion that Will and Patricia were having in another thread. Up
> until now, I've been relying on the mystical route to ideas, but I'm
> sure there's a very practical system out there for putting yourself in
> the right place, time, and frame of mind to generate ideas. I just
> don't know what it is yet.
I'd suggest rummaging around in your mind and figuring out what triggers
the various states you need to have access to. I know my own mental
balance is a bit tenuous and difficult to maintain, but I have spent,
particularly over the last five years or so, a lot of time figuring out
what makes me tick, why it does that, and what I can do to fix the
inevitable glitches that come up.
It sometimes feels a bit like choreographing recalcitrant angels on the
head of a pin, and the process will probably require years of
fine-tuning, but I can make it work with decent success ratings now.
I think that's sort of practical mysticism, which is more or less the
way I run my life in general. I don't know whether it would work for
anyone else, but I'm sure there's a way of performing a tribal lay that
works for you.
--
Heather Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.dslonramp.net/~darkhawk/
I understand about indecision, I don't care if I get behind
People living in competition; all I want is to have my peace of mind.
- Boston, "Peace of Mind"
LK
wrote:
>raks...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
>>Ooh, you've done opium. What was it like?
>
>I confess, it was my favorite. Very dream-like. A bit scary in retrospect: I
>fell down on a beach and cut myself, and didn't notice until I saw the blood.
>Hmm. From descriptions I've heard of Valium, it might be a bit like that.
>Everything's nice and slow and remarkably agreeable.
>
>Will
Codiene and a migraine and watching "Five Million Years to Earth" will
do the same thing. (That was my migraine movie. Take the medication,
pop in the video, make some tea, and snuggle in a blanket in a high
backed rocking chair.) The head hurts so much and the codiene helps
you not care so much so you relax some and then the painkillers can
start to work to lessen the pain, then you notice another part of the
body is unhappy about something else.
I miss codiene. Great cough suppressant. Glad I've learned to spot
those kinds of headaches before they get that bad and partially head
them off. The dreamy was better than being drunk, but too much would
give me dreamy hangover for a couple days. And the medications
available OTC or Rx today allow me to function instead of spending 2
or 3 days curled up in a rocking chair.
eLK
LK
wrote:
>Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com wrote:
>
>>I myself have smoked opium, and hated every minute of it. It felt like
>>becoming a one-celled animal, and at the time it seemed it was going to
>>be
>>eternal in a really unpleasant way.
>
>I understand that. How do you feel about laughing gas at the dentist? Rachel
>hated it. I rather enjoy it. Maybe simply because it reminds me of the wilder
>days of my youth.
If I may pop in here. Strange. I knew I was getting too much when
the dentist starting looking like Dr. Frankenstein and his female
assistant like Igor.
eLK
LK
>Not yet mentioned: one person's Great Drug Experience is another person's
>normal state of consciousness.
>
>I suspect that whatever your normal state of mind/emotion is, there are
>people taking illicit drugs to achieve it.
Okay, how do I sell it?
eLK
Heather Anne Nicoll
I think it might have been 'Groping towards a critical language', the
one where 'mode' came up, but this is based on furry memory and my
apparent recollection that that was the only panel I saw where you and
Steven Brust were both on the panel (which seems to be confirmed by my
flyer collection).
T. Kenyon
> Would anyone like to share the techniques they use to come up with
> plots?
To me, a plot is the string of events, while most people have been talking
about *ideas.* I get more ideas that I can write. Here's a small bit of
plotting advice.
A friend recommended this really great, big yellow book to me, um, and the
name isn't coming right now. (The book's at home, and I'm in the
lab.) It's by Dwight V. Swain and it's called *Techniques of
the Selling Writer*. It's a bit formulaic, but it helps get the juices
flowing in the pre-writing part. I used to just sit down and let the
words happen, but now I'm crafting a bit more during the revising
process. Basically, here's part of it:
A "scene" is a unit of conflict. The pattern is Goal - Conflict -
Disaster (in a longer work).
A "sequel" is a unit of characterization (and many times is text and prose
and what most normal, sane people call a "scene," but it has to be
distinguished from above.) The pattern is Reaction - Dilemma -
Decision.
The idea is that the completion of each pattern leads to the initiation of
another. A decision can give you a goal. A disaster calls for a
reaction. However, I've found that one doesn't need to alternate them but
can string several of one type together, or can pay scant attention to one
if the other is more immediate. (The disaster is that behind Door #3 is a
man with a gun. The sequel is very short as the character doesn't have
time for ruminating.)
When I'm prewriting or revising, I sit down with these outlines and figure
out what parts of my story fit in where. Like I said, it's formulaic, and
I've had "sequel" bits that are smack dab in the middle of a big, tense
situation, but once I recognized them and called them "sequel" I was able
to shape them better. Also, I had a scene (usual, sane sense) that wasn't
working, sat down and outlined it so I identified the "scene" bits and
"sequel" bits, and realized that I wasn't finishing the patterns for
either one, and once I did that, the scene (normal sense) worked a lot
better.
Hope this helps,
TK Kenyon
"God not only plays dice [with the universe], He also sometimes throws
the dice where they cannot be seen."
--Stephen Hawkings
Rachel Brown
> > Now, along those same lines, anyone think there's anything to the
> > whole "tormented artist" stereotype? Does emotional distress enhance
> > either the idea generation or writing phase of things?
Speaking from my own experience, (gee, this ties in really nicely with the
Prozac discussion upthread) I've found that to be a really dangerous
concept.
When you're depressed, and I am speaking in the clinical sense, there's a
perverse tendency to glamorize and cling to your miserable state, thinking
things like, "I'm a tragic artist and I couldn't work if I didn't suffer,"
or "I've seen too much, I have scars, I have a dagger in my heart, I'm
broken beyond repair and that gives me special insight and artistry that
the happy sheep-people can never understand." Sort of like the Richard
Thompson song, "God loves a drunk," which has the line, "I pity you worms
with your semis and pensions."
However, I did once manage to get a pretty good play written while I was
bordering on suicidal. But a) I only did that once, and b) it was about
being suicidal. Too much misery crushes energy, crushes discipline, and
crushes range. Even if you theoretically could produce something, you
don't want to.
However, given a baseline state of normality, I can't find a noticeable
difference to my writing whether I'm happy or sad. But I get more done when
I'm happy, because I have more energy, and it's easier to keep going when I
feel reasonably content with myself and what I'm doing.
Rachel
Chuck Gee
> leigh...@geocities.com (Leigh Kimmel) wrote:
> Now, along those same lines, anyone think there's anything to the
> whole "tormented artist" stereotype? Does emotional distress enhance
> either the idea generation or writing phase of things?
>
Ernest Hemingway once made a statement (I paraphrase here): "The best
early training for a writer is an unhappy childhood."