Me: Don’t listen to the voices. You know how that turns out.
Arkem: Cake and parties?
Me: No. That’s where blood in backstories comes from.
Arkem: Oh.
This is good advice. I give excellent advice. Like, Don’t and Panic. In the correct circumstances you should totally follow those. Same with the thing about the voices. Unless you’re a writer. Then maybe you should listen to them. (Unless they say ‘kill the prince’. Don’t do that. Well, okay, if he really deserved it. Or it’ll serve the plot. Or it’ll be funny. NB: Do not use these arguments as a basis for real life decisions.)
If you’re a writer (or an artist of any kind, I guess) the voices are just another part of your mind (usually the part that’s a little less attached to reality than the rest). My voices are the parts of my mind that ask me ridiculous questions and make me laugh when I’m not supposed to, that notice things I wouldn’t otherwise and suggest putting things together that didn’t fit before. They also wake me up in the middle of the night, distract me during exams, and yes, they’re responsible for the blood in the backstories. But that’s okay because sometimes that’s my favourte part.
I feel like I should do a public service announcement here: Not all writers do this. Some of them are perfectly sensible. Some of them have, “no four-year-old chirping, ‘why do you think aspen trunks turn black?’ …. no bad-ass tattooed teenager eyeing the man next to us in line, nudging [them] to notice his beautiful… uh… hands. No historian running commentary on every little thing [they] see, no philosopher or romantic spinning legends of tiny facts.”
Oh wait. She said they were asleep.* My mistake.
By the way if hearing her description made you think, Oh yeah, I know them, it’s likely you’re a bit of an artist of some kind (or further along on the crazy train than you’re admitting).
Now… generally by the time I’m done saying, “I hear voices” people are backing away from me and I’m calling after them, “I’m not crazy, I’m a writer” and I see them get this look that says, “How are those two things different?” Just… try to restrain yourselves, okay? And tell me this instead: ever hear voices?
(P.S. I meant what I said, if your voices are telling you to butcher puppies do it in fiction, or, you know, tell someone with a badge or a stethoscope or something.)
* The idea of the voices being asleep is a little weird to me. Mine never seem to shut up. I’ve only had them be quiet twice in my life that I remember, and in both cases I was well and truly justifiably distracted. Of course, I think if they went away I would miss them.
Kandace Mavrick
Paul McLaughlan
platform thing 
Sassamifrass (@sassamifrass)
29/08/2011
I was having a good conversation with Wuffie about this sort of thing earlier in the week, actually! We were discussing the difference between being childish and child-like.
I think most people start out with their version of the voices. As our brains form and re-form, and we build up in our heads an idea of what is and isn’t real, we think about a lot of tangential things. Sure, we now know that brain plasticity doesn’t cease entirely in adulthood, but those times are the ones most people can look back on and recall a sense of adventure. A certain look-around-corners-ness that makes you hum songs about all the gestures you’ve ever seen, or wonder what naming scheme you’d use for raindrops.
As we age, we establish strong patterns that allow us to get on with things without having to really be consciously present, and I think people who tend to do less of the voices thing are naturally better at that. They’re able to optimise their connections and focus on whatever it is they want to do with themselves.
And then there are the people who are focused on the tangents. Seeing where the patterns skip and looking for the pieces you might have missed before (which is how I think about my own creative urges). I feel like my brain is a whole bunch of iron filings, and the world is a magnet that gets dragged over them on a regular basis. Or sometimes I feel like it is the other way around, and I have the magnet in my brain (no tinfoil hat, though).
And I think that is why people often associate those kinds of experiences with being like a kid – because you are still in that phase on making connections, of playing with the blocks in your head.
I do find that when I focus on my other skills – the cubicle farm ones – that it leaves less space in my brain for playing with the blocks. Which I am sad about. But I make room where I can.
Kandace Mavrick
29/08/2011
I know what you mean. I draw that distinction with people a lot. I am child-LIKE but not childISH (mostly).
And ‘playing with blocks in your head’ is totally what I spend my days doing 🙂
I remember when i was a kid playing with my sister and we’d start these games with me saying, “Let’s make it –“. Not ‘let’s pretend’ but ‘let’s MAKE IT’ like I could change the world by speculating about the possibilities.
Back when I used to also have more regular (I tend to refer to them as soul-sucking) jobs I would come home and not be able to write because I’d spent the whole day deliberately NOT THINKING so that I didn’t go stark raving mad. And it took me hours to remember how to think properly. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what happens to people who really turn into grown-ups – they’ve forgotten how to get back.
Sassamifrass (@sassamifrass)
29/08/2011
I remember trying to convince the neighbour’s niece that I could turn handfuls of dirt into fish if I threw them into a pond. I figured that if I could make her believe it, even if it was just for a minute or two, that would MAKE it. And that if I wanted her to believe it, then I had to believe it too. So I spent a few minutes shifting myself over to completely believing I could work ichthyoidian miracles. I think it worked. Maybe. She could have just decided to play along with me. Either way, it made me think a lot about how little reality the brain needs to make things real!
…Oh god, that last sentence sounds like something an executive would say if they decided to sell creativity to a panel of investors. Argh. ARGH. AAAAAAARGH. I partially retract that sentence.
This is all totally relevant to what you said, honest.
The times when my equivalent of ‘the voices’ tends to fade out is when I’m in Survival Mode – just get things done and get out. So that sounds about right.
I think that’s why people who really love their jobs often come off as being a little child-like. No matter what their career is, they’ve clearly found a way to keep playing with the blocks. I can’t imagine ever feeling truly happy without being able to do that.
Kandace Mavrick
29/08/2011
I know what you mean. I used to tell my sister these ridiculous lies, like that if you stood behind the bathroom door you could hear the fairies, or that every person had a mermaid double and you could talk to them if you put your head under the water (which she wasn’t allowed to do because she had grommets in her ears). And I don’t know if she believed me or not but she acted like she did. And i swear, while she believed me I started to wonder just a little bit if it wasn’t true after all.
Belief is scary. It’s scarier in groups. It’s what makes me worry about most religions, honestly.