I love this blog post by Karin Gillespie, one of the fiction students in the Converse College Low-Res MFA program. She writes about the dueling nature of the writer’s brain and the writing process:
“Have you ever read the work of a young, uncorrupted writer? It’s like venturing into a jungle: Fresh. Green. Wild. Monkeys beating their furry chests. Parrots shrieking. Anacondas curling around trees. A chaos of creativity.
“Such a writer is ruled almost entirely by her subconscious. The subconscious—let’s call her Crazy Daisy -- doesn’t know the difference between a gerund and a dangling participle; she only cares about expressing herself. Writing is play, not work.
“Unfortunately Crazy Daisy, charming as she is, has a problem: Her work meanders like a toddler strewing petals at a wedding: she needs to be reined in. Enter Ms. Grind.
“ Ms. Grind cares about the rules.”
How to resolve this tension and use it to our advantage? Who wins, Crazy Daisy or Ms. Grind? Read on to see!
