This has merit all day and twice on Conjugal visit Thursday’s. If you’re truly immersing yourself into the character and that character happens to be a rather unorthodox connoisseur of various window flavors, the act of transforming into Mr. MadMan himself stands to drive one mad. I’d assume it’s not a bitten by werewolf style disfigurement or an immediate chemical makeup reconstruction that happens immediately following a zombie bite. This is more the pack a day for 2 marriages that gives you Lymphoma type of process. The real vindictive and insidious kind. All this said, madness is open for interpretation and is often times subjective. (Insert generic Mad-Hatter quote about all the mad having more fun or like) so if we dismiss that and jump on over to goals we can render that down into motives. Which is where I believe the fundamental structure for gauging madness needs to be Applied. If you are aware that your writing will eventually drive you insane but you are riding for a purpose that has a greater meaning or value, it’s only then if we get to decide if madness is worth it. Risk versus reward. Personal opinion throwing half of your sandwich away today so you can watch you figure tomorrow sounds like a slippery slope into open interpretations of importance boundaries need to be set when you are dealing with sensitive subject matter. Anyone can attest to the vulnerability they feel when they open themselves up like that as I am fully aware you are fully aware of. simply put and then I’m done, at the risk of going mad someday if rioting improves your quality of life for even one fucking second it is worth it because you’re anticipation of that madness is by its nature madness itself
Yeah I’m aware of the errors so Sumie and also I love that Siri auto corrected to riots and writing when I was trying to say writing. Although I’m aware you guys are a bunch of shark cookies I just wanted to highlight her keen ability to both piss me off and amaze me with her brilliance.
Undoubtedly. With the silver tongues of a seasoned craftsmen, and the enthusiasm of a consolation handjob after dinner at Chili’s. Although, I’d suspect your heightened emphasis on the E, when you say Danke to the server that just brought you the wrong meal, but you’re famished enough to just let it be.
In comparison, Siri is just spiteful and enjoys watching me age prematurely. Who’s to say. Diese Dinge passieren, I’m told.
Sometimes I wonder about my 12-step work. It saved my life but there’s the belief in a higher power that’s going to make it ok and no “big deals” etc. but I do better when I write from a place of terror and desperation. Junkies always have good stories.
Argh! Now I might have to delve into the brain science stuff Tom Bilyeu mentioned. A sleep expert had told him that dreams allow us to relive experiences but without emotional reaction. In that same way, I've always believed that turning strong experience into prose -- depicting events in the abstraction of language, pacing it, tweaking the truth for better effect -- allows us to master those experiences. As Atticus mentioned above, we must slow down and really study the events in a detached way. That's the benefit I've hoped to find in writing.
However, this same sleep expert told Bilyeu that if stress chemicals were present during the dreaming process, that only made the PTSD worse. The dreams reinforced the trauma instead of mitigating it.
I think writing can be therapeutic but with a “shelf life”. By this I mean that you may be dealing with issues you have at the time, but that doesn’t inherently mean the issues are resolved with the completion of the writing project. Issues—variations of past ones in addition to all manner of new ones—will continue to be present in ones life, so—like therapy sessions as opposed to just a single session—you continue the therapeutic cycle of writing and dealing with problems past and present and the ways in which they change or don’t. And blah blah blah.
In the past 20+ years I’ve lost 25 friends. Suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, you name it. I’m always around it. When I turned 40 I found myself writing a story about the loss of so many people, not counting the hundreds of patients Ive taken care of who died.
In this I found it more therapeutic than anything else. It forced me to read and learn about death in a more academic sense rather than purely emotional. At first I thought I was going crazy with all the information I was gaining and retaining, but in all I feel less crazy now than before. But only because I went down the rabbit hole and came out unscathed.
The best book I’ve read on the subject of suicide, from an emotional and academic perspective was a book called, “why people die by suicide” by Thomas Joiner. It helped with thinking about what leads a person to commit suicide and to know how their suicide effected me and my future. Also the past and future of the character in my present project.
I died from a fentanyl overdose a few years back. I was technically dead for about 4 minutes and paramedics took a while to bring me out. I didn't see any light. No rainbows or hell. For better or for worse it changed me. I realized I can be absurd and no one's really going to notice. They have their own shit going on and I'm not the center of the universe and that's just fine. It did make me a little nihilistic though. That's why I chose this writing group. May we all make Mr. Palahniuk proud.
As a teenager I read the Alexander Pope quote, "Our anonymity is assured by the fact that other people care for no one but themselves." At first I thought Pope was an old crank. The longer I live, the more I think Pope nailed it.
AAAAH! I took so many notes from that lecture. Thank you Sir. I'm a toddler with a gun in the form of words now. I need to be a bit more careful? Right?
And Mr. Grieves helped save scores of families from the Satanic Panic. When the professionals were preying on those to get more money for their pysch practices. He almost single handedly went after people he had no business going after because he was worried about the little guy. He's a good man. The King of absurd.
Have you read "Satan's Secrets" the history of the satanic ritual abuse trend? It's amazing and tragic. A cheap-ish trade paperback, and worth the search.
It took me so long to realize what you realized in just a few minutes. Like until 30. That probably none of this really matters. (Save for to the people I love and who love me.) And I thought that realization would push me over the edge. Nope. It only strengthened my resolve to do better. At whatever I was in love with at the moment. Do better.
This might be a stretch, but I'd like to reference Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Wizard of Earthsea" here. It's a kid's book, but it deals with some heavy personal themes in clever ways. I haven't read it in a long time, but as I recall the basic premise was that magic existed, and the mastery of said magic was accomplished by learning the true names of things. Knowing these names was the key to the wizard's magical powers. I won't spoil the ending, but I love the metaphor. Say its name, own its power. I wouldn't worry about the acknowledgement of your deepest truth exacerbating anything. Speak it, embrace it, reconcile. If madness is the worst-case scenario, let it fly.
“Dangerous Writing” — which so many people embrace as a therapy… might actually make us sick."
I've thought about this a lot, having dealt with complex, chronic health issues that have informed/inspired my writing, i.e. it's occurred to me that my writing may come from the same place as my illness(es). I'll spare everyone my personal diatribe but for anyone who's interested in the topic, I suggest you check out the essay "Mutiny of the Soul" by Charles Eisenstein as well as the work of Dr. Gabor Mate. Indeed our thoughts/feelings/beliefs can affect our physical health. Along with my personal shit, now I've got to worry about GloboHomo...
I guess if someone finds a solution to something which has neurotically captured their attention, a new issue will eventually arise to the solution that they came up with and so it becomes a continuous cycle of creating more and more hypothetical problems and solutions.
I would have to say that writing about my family and traumatic childhood definitely made me more crazy. The stories were in my consciousness as abstractions and the more I wrote about them, the more the pain and trauma engrained and defined me. It was like I was etching in the stone of my being every time I took pen to paper. I lost my fucking mind.
Okay, but did you rush through them? Or did you unpack them slowly and craft them? Among my students, the ones who rush through memoir-based fiction reinforce the trauma. But the writers who pace it and present it beautifully crafted -- so the emotion lands with the reader and serves the reader -- those students seem very happy. And ready to write more fiction.
Another faction is the writers who write and rewrite their trauma until they plain get bored of it. Then they move on and write joyfully and with freedom. But that initial trauma novel is good for learning skills and experimenting. And your trauma keeps you practicing your skills. Once you're bored of that trauma, you've still got a new batch of writing skills.
This is something I think about a little too much.
It's easier to travel down well-worn neural pathways than it is to connect new ones, so catastrophising ends up becoming the norm. I think it's very possible that writing and rumination can cause psychological damage, but I also think that it can be a positive experience, and used as a tool for introspection.
Like a kind of precursor to therapy. Not therapy itself, but an exploration of how you're doing internally.
I find that, when I'm not doing anything that involves creation, I tend to walk those same neural paths anyway; I tend to get bogged down in the drudgery, but it's not the act of creation that causes it. I like the mask that creation can provide. By making stuff up, it can change the soundtrack to the whole mental commute, so even if the path is the same at least it makes it seem a little more interesting.
Which is good, because when I'm not working on something, my brain will let me know by being an absolute arsehole.
FYI, this post has come up at exactly the right time.
Funny how that happens. And I agree: If I don't create a disaster on the page then my mind turns the sluggish printer or the flat tire into a world-class catastrophe.
Getting into a daily writing habit is the best thing Ive ever done for myself. However, I can see the dangers of isolation and obsession that can come from writing, or any other addiction that could be confused as being healthy. Especially on top of too much internet. Im careful to make certain that I get out amongst people on the weekends at the very least, get plenty of exercise and outside time, et cetera. Its all about balance. Dont be like JD Salinger and lock yourself away from your family in a writing shack.
The story I posted here is about the fact that we cannot fulfill our need for human contact through the internet. A friend saying "Yeah, you cant fuck a screen." In response to this subject is what inspired the story.
Keep writing for the catharsis, but keep living in the real world for the material.
Nurture and nature has served me according to its virtue leaving me with a sense of NOGAS. No one gives a shit. As long as it doesn’t directly effect them eating. Even if it does, distracted quickly enough to process it.
Feeling like I’m standing still in a Nuevo-art film, with people rushing to and fro with definitive reason or in the Matrix only I’m Neo or the woman in ‘The Red Dress’ focused and fixed with purpose. Even when meeting someone who appears wide awake, they seem swept away in an extacy or interpretation of it.
Read the negative reviews of sex toys on Amazon. Tragedy steeped in expired lube or the short- circuited vibrator. Give me the 1-star review of the Inflatable Judy Doll over the latest news headline. These reviews always go into a ruined experience. All the hopes for a ravenous night end with something burning.
Oh dear. I'm a sucker for anything that turns intimacy into a commodity and a transaction. Witness all the "gifts" being pimped before Christmas. My guilty pleasure is reading the review websites for sex workers, where the customers post their (sometimes) terrible experiences in detail. Usually the sex worker will post a denial or explanation. Among my favorite mea culpas was a sex worker who explained, "I regret that I had McDonald's to eat shortly before our encounter..." I'll leave you to imagine what followed.
" Maybe, secretly, everyone’s life is ruined off screen, and we’re all gabbing along wittily lest we notice the corpse in the bedroom and break down weeping." My goodness Mr. Palahniuk. Beautiful.
This has merit all day and twice on Conjugal visit Thursday’s. If you’re truly immersing yourself into the character and that character happens to be a rather unorthodox connoisseur of various window flavors, the act of transforming into Mr. MadMan himself stands to drive one mad. I’d assume it’s not a bitten by werewolf style disfigurement or an immediate chemical makeup reconstruction that happens immediately following a zombie bite. This is more the pack a day for 2 marriages that gives you Lymphoma type of process. The real vindictive and insidious kind. All this said, madness is open for interpretation and is often times subjective. (Insert generic Mad-Hatter quote about all the mad having more fun or like) so if we dismiss that and jump on over to goals we can render that down into motives. Which is where I believe the fundamental structure for gauging madness needs to be Applied. If you are aware that your writing will eventually drive you insane but you are riding for a purpose that has a greater meaning or value, it’s only then if we get to decide if madness is worth it. Risk versus reward. Personal opinion throwing half of your sandwich away today so you can watch you figure tomorrow sounds like a slippery slope into open interpretations of importance boundaries need to be set when you are dealing with sensitive subject matter. Anyone can attest to the vulnerability they feel when they open themselves up like that as I am fully aware you are fully aware of. simply put and then I’m done, at the risk of going mad someday if rioting improves your quality of life for even one fucking second it is worth it because you’re anticipation of that madness is by its nature madness itself
Yeah I’m aware of the errors so Sumie and also I love that Siri auto corrected to riots and writing when I was trying to say writing. Although I’m aware you guys are a bunch of shark cookies I just wanted to highlight her keen ability to both piss me off and amaze me with her brilliance.
Leaning heavier on the piss me off side though…
I'm both charmed the puzzled by "window flavors." Siri speaks English the way I speak German.
Curious. Unbelievable as in unlikely, or as in unbelievably good?
Undoubtedly. With the silver tongues of a seasoned craftsmen, and the enthusiasm of a consolation handjob after dinner at Chili’s. Although, I’d suspect your heightened emphasis on the E, when you say Danke to the server that just brought you the wrong meal, but you’re famished enough to just let it be.
In comparison, Siri is just spiteful and enjoys watching me age prematurely. Who’s to say. Diese Dinge passieren, I’m told.
Sometimes I wonder about my 12-step work. It saved my life but there’s the belief in a higher power that’s going to make it ok and no “big deals” etc. but I do better when I write from a place of terror and desperation. Junkies always have good stories.
But then stories also heal us. That’s basically what a meeting is. Listening to people tell stories. It works. 🤷♂️
Argh! Now I might have to delve into the brain science stuff Tom Bilyeu mentioned. A sleep expert had told him that dreams allow us to relive experiences but without emotional reaction. In that same way, I've always believed that turning strong experience into prose -- depicting events in the abstraction of language, pacing it, tweaking the truth for better effect -- allows us to master those experiences. As Atticus mentioned above, we must slow down and really study the events in a detached way. That's the benefit I've hoped to find in writing.
However, this same sleep expert told Bilyeu that if stress chemicals were present during the dreaming process, that only made the PTSD worse. The dreams reinforced the trauma instead of mitigating it.
Of personal inertia outta the lens we see and the one we were given/look through… Hmmphf, *insert I love that my creativity feeds my solitude shrug*.
"A tiny racist period" lol I need to remember that one.
Oh dear. I'll use that disclaimer when I push the E. B. White story on people.
I think writing can be therapeutic but with a “shelf life”. By this I mean that you may be dealing with issues you have at the time, but that doesn’t inherently mean the issues are resolved with the completion of the writing project. Issues—variations of past ones in addition to all manner of new ones—will continue to be present in ones life, so—like therapy sessions as opposed to just a single session—you continue the therapeutic cycle of writing and dealing with problems past and present and the ways in which they change or don’t. And blah blah blah.
In the past 20+ years I’ve lost 25 friends. Suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, you name it. I’m always around it. When I turned 40 I found myself writing a story about the loss of so many people, not counting the hundreds of patients Ive taken care of who died.
In this I found it more therapeutic than anything else. It forced me to read and learn about death in a more academic sense rather than purely emotional. At first I thought I was going crazy with all the information I was gaining and retaining, but in all I feel less crazy now than before. But only because I went down the rabbit hole and came out unscathed.
The best book I’ve read on the subject of suicide, from an emotional and academic perspective was a book called, “why people die by suicide” by Thomas Joiner. It helped with thinking about what leads a person to commit suicide and to know how their suicide effected me and my future. Also the past and future of the character in my present project.
I died from a fentanyl overdose a few years back. I was technically dead for about 4 minutes and paramedics took a while to bring me out. I didn't see any light. No rainbows or hell. For better or for worse it changed me. I realized I can be absurd and no one's really going to notice. They have their own shit going on and I'm not the center of the universe and that's just fine. It did make me a little nihilistic though. That's why I chose this writing group. May we all make Mr. Palahniuk proud.
As a teenager I read the Alexander Pope quote, "Our anonymity is assured by the fact that other people care for no one but themselves." At first I thought Pope was an old crank. The longer I live, the more I think Pope nailed it.
YES! That's it! Why do people buy that new car to impress their neighbors and friends? They don't give a fuck. Not one fuck.
Only the people who sell cars care.
AAAAH! I took so many notes from that lecture. Thank you Sir. I'm a toddler with a gun in the form of words now. I need to be a bit more careful? Right?
And Mr. Grieves helped save scores of families from the Satanic Panic. When the professionals were preying on those to get more money for their pysch practices. He almost single handedly went after people he had no business going after because he was worried about the little guy. He's a good man. The King of absurd.
Have you read "Satan's Secrets" the history of the satanic ritual abuse trend? It's amazing and tragic. A cheap-ish trade paperback, and worth the search.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27RtJp-rhHk
Hail Satan!
I had another old crank from a home tell me, “no one’s thinking about you, they’re too busy thinking about themselves.”
Tattoo that on my face. Please.
Omfg. I have a tattoo gun with some rusty needles and I’m out of practice (meaning none) but here goes.
*chainsaw noice*
Noice? Are you French or what?
It took me so long to realize what you realized in just a few minutes. Like until 30. That probably none of this really matters. (Save for to the people I love and who love me.) And I thought that realization would push me over the edge. Nope. It only strengthened my resolve to do better. At whatever I was in love with at the moment. Do better.
LOL. It took me 37 years and death. Better late than never.
This might be a stretch, but I'd like to reference Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Wizard of Earthsea" here. It's a kid's book, but it deals with some heavy personal themes in clever ways. I haven't read it in a long time, but as I recall the basic premise was that magic existed, and the mastery of said magic was accomplished by learning the true names of things. Knowing these names was the key to the wizard's magical powers. I won't spoil the ending, but I love the metaphor. Say its name, own its power. I wouldn't worry about the acknowledgement of your deepest truth exacerbating anything. Speak it, embrace it, reconcile. If madness is the worst-case scenario, let it fly.
"They say self-awareness will set you free.
But when you look inside, who stares back?"
Focus uncontrolled leads to obsession. It's why I can only fall asleep watching TV or listening to a book on tape.
“Dangerous Writing” — which so many people embrace as a therapy… might actually make us sick."
I've thought about this a lot, having dealt with complex, chronic health issues that have informed/inspired my writing, i.e. it's occurred to me that my writing may come from the same place as my illness(es). I'll spare everyone my personal diatribe but for anyone who's interested in the topic, I suggest you check out the essay "Mutiny of the Soul" by Charles Eisenstein as well as the work of Dr. Gabor Mate. Indeed our thoughts/feelings/beliefs can affect our physical health. Along with my personal shit, now I've got to worry about GloboHomo...
Thank you, will do. I'm a big reader of books that link chronic illness to creativity.
I guess if someone finds a solution to something which has neurotically captured their attention, a new issue will eventually arise to the solution that they came up with and so it becomes a continuous cycle of creating more and more hypothetical problems and solutions.
I would have to say that writing about my family and traumatic childhood definitely made me more crazy. The stories were in my consciousness as abstractions and the more I wrote about them, the more the pain and trauma engrained and defined me. It was like I was etching in the stone of my being every time I took pen to paper. I lost my fucking mind.
Okay, but did you rush through them? Or did you unpack them slowly and craft them? Among my students, the ones who rush through memoir-based fiction reinforce the trauma. But the writers who pace it and present it beautifully crafted -- so the emotion lands with the reader and serves the reader -- those students seem very happy. And ready to write more fiction.
Another faction is the writers who write and rewrite their trauma until they plain get bored of it. Then they move on and write joyfully and with freedom. But that initial trauma novel is good for learning skills and experimenting. And your trauma keeps you practicing your skills. Once you're bored of that trauma, you've still got a new batch of writing skills.
This is something I think about a little too much.
It's easier to travel down well-worn neural pathways than it is to connect new ones, so catastrophising ends up becoming the norm. I think it's very possible that writing and rumination can cause psychological damage, but I also think that it can be a positive experience, and used as a tool for introspection.
Like a kind of precursor to therapy. Not therapy itself, but an exploration of how you're doing internally.
I find that, when I'm not doing anything that involves creation, I tend to walk those same neural paths anyway; I tend to get bogged down in the drudgery, but it's not the act of creation that causes it. I like the mask that creation can provide. By making stuff up, it can change the soundtrack to the whole mental commute, so even if the path is the same at least it makes it seem a little more interesting.
Which is good, because when I'm not working on something, my brain will let me know by being an absolute arsehole.
FYI, this post has come up at exactly the right time.
Funny how that happens. And I agree: If I don't create a disaster on the page then my mind turns the sluggish printer or the flat tire into a world-class catastrophe.
Getting into a daily writing habit is the best thing Ive ever done for myself. However, I can see the dangers of isolation and obsession that can come from writing, or any other addiction that could be confused as being healthy. Especially on top of too much internet. Im careful to make certain that I get out amongst people on the weekends at the very least, get plenty of exercise and outside time, et cetera. Its all about balance. Dont be like JD Salinger and lock yourself away from your family in a writing shack.
The story I posted here is about the fact that we cannot fulfill our need for human contact through the internet. A friend saying "Yeah, you cant fuck a screen." In response to this subject is what inspired the story.
Keep writing for the catharsis, but keep living in the real world for the material.
Nurture and nature has served me according to its virtue leaving me with a sense of NOGAS. No one gives a shit. As long as it doesn’t directly effect them eating. Even if it does, distracted quickly enough to process it.
Feeling like I’m standing still in a Nuevo-art film, with people rushing to and fro with definitive reason or in the Matrix only I’m Neo or the woman in ‘The Red Dress’ focused and fixed with purpose. Even when meeting someone who appears wide awake, they seem swept away in an extacy or interpretation of it.
Or it could simply be I’m driving myself crazy.
Read the negative reviews of sex toys on Amazon. Tragedy steeped in expired lube or the short- circuited vibrator. Give me the 1-star review of the Inflatable Judy Doll over the latest news headline. These reviews always go into a ruined experience. All the hopes for a ravenous night end with something burning.
Oh dear. I'm a sucker for anything that turns intimacy into a commodity and a transaction. Witness all the "gifts" being pimped before Christmas. My guilty pleasure is reading the review websites for sex workers, where the customers post their (sometimes) terrible experiences in detail. Usually the sex worker will post a denial or explanation. Among my favorite mea culpas was a sex worker who explained, "I regret that I had McDonald's to eat shortly before our encounter..." I'll leave you to imagine what followed.
Then you must read this:
https://www.cnet.com/news/abyss-creations-ai-sex-robots-headed-to-your-bed-and-heart/
Disney movies love a dead parent or dead parents too.
Wait, what? I thought Nemo's parents were divorced.
Funny that there are probably more dead parents than broken marriages in Disney, I actually can't think of one in the animations.
" Maybe, secretly, everyone’s life is ruined off screen, and we’re all gabbing along wittily lest we notice the corpse in the bedroom and break down weeping." My goodness Mr. Palahniuk. Beautiful.