Imaginary Worlds and Insanity

I came upon a forum post recently that read – ‘I’ve invented a complete imaginary world. Am I insane?’

Having created an extensive imaginary world myself, I was more than a little curious to read what the consensus was on this question. Not that anything was going to shake my belief that imaginary worlds are important expressions of our full and complete selves. I just wanted to know if I was in a strange minority and should hesitate to bring it up in job interviews.

Of course this lonely post was answered by a wave of people who had their own imaginary (often quite elaborate) worlds. The discussion was pretty fascinating (link provided below).

I have to say I get annoyed when people refer to daydreaming or imagined worlds as ‘escapism’. I would go out on a limb and say that this actually has nothing to do with escapism, and is one of the purest forms of ‘realism’ imaginable.

An imaginary world is a space in which to be different versions of ourselves and to experience unexpected, wonderful and sometimes alarming aspects of our minds. At these moments you are becoming as free from outside constructions (of who you should be, for example) as it is ever possible to become. You are actually facing yourself rather than ‘losing’ yourself.

I’m also annoyed by patronising accounts of children’s and teenagers’ imaginary worlds as ‘safe places’ where they can practice to be proper adults (of course, on reaching adulthood, they should instantly relinquish any make believe tendencies). Anyone who has an imaginary world worth its salt will know it’s not a safe place at all! (That’s enough of me getting annoyed now).

Obviously authors and artists need to hold onto their imaginary worlds. Maybe everyone else should start to feel a bit better about them too. After all, you’re using more of the creative capacity of your brain, and that has to be a good thing.

P.S. Good news on imaginary friends also. Apparently they’re the expression of a healthy imagination, and now we should all be a little self-conscious if we never had one. I don’t really think I did, just a cast of characters I inhabited at will. Nothing weird about that, is there?

 

‘I’ve invented a complete imaginary world. Am I insane?’:
http://ask.metafilter.com/59628/Ive-invented-a-complete-imaginary-world-Am-I-insane

Research on children’s imaginary friends:
http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/202632_imaginary07.html

Or maybe we can be a little lazy and just borrow other people’s imaginary friends:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=imaginary-friends

The Brontes - imaginary worldbuilders par excellence

oscar wilde quote

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Oscar Wilde

factual fable?

Aesop’s fable describes a thirsty crow that cannot reach  reach the water in a pitcher. It cleverly uses stones to raise the water level. Recent research has found that crows are more than able to carry out this task.

Aptly named researcher Christopher Bird commented:

“Corvids are remarkably intelligent, and in many ways rival the great apes in their physical intelligence and ability to solve problems. The only other animal known to complete a similar task is the orang-utan.

“This is remarkable considering their brain is so different to the great apes’.

To see video of the clever crows go to

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/dp/2009080602

can you read an ebook in the bath?

This article is as interesting for the discussion that follows. Can you read an ebook in the bath? Ummm, yes?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/feb/09/kindle-ipod-books-piracy

reasons not to use google translate

(Shakespeare’s moving passage from Othello, translated back from Italian):

‘Shut down, shut down, a brief candle! Life is but a shadow that walks a mediocre actor who strut and size on the stage for the tempo of his party and then not hear below’

or who could forget that famous Oscar Wilde quote:

‘We are all in rigagnolo, but some of us lay down the stars’ ?

friends and readers

“Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.”

–George Eliot

When I’m writing fiction I imagine that I’m writing to a friend. When I’m editing I imagine that I’m editing for a hostile audience. It’s important not to get the two mixed up!

Poppies: drugs, death and sleepiness

This knight seems to have run into problems due to his unfamiliarity with the symbolism of poppies. Don’t let the same thing happen to you!

 

Drugs:

‘I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed …  I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphynxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids.  I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.’

Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Thomas de Quincey

 

Death:

‘In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row …’

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

 

Sleepiness:

‘Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,

In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex’d she lay,

Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress’d

Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away;

Flown, like a thought, until the morrow-day;

Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain …’

The Eve of St Agnes, Keats

The art of tweeting?

I’ve been trawling through a plethora of pages on the art of tweeting.

It appears that in order to be a good twittizen of twitterdom we should ask ‘is that tweetable?’ or is it better left untweeted?

Then we need to consider the quality of the words chosen, refining our message down and down to something like a Japanese haiku. In fact many twitterers are now tweeting in haiku form.

But I’d like to say a word in defense of random tweets. Random tweets are like snatches of conversation heard on the train. They are often intriguing and at the very least remind us that we are not alone in our boredom / frustration / desire for a slab of dark chocolate.

Perhaps one day we will all be publishing our random tweets as memoirs that we can lovingly pass down from generation to generation (thus blessing our great, great grandchildren with the knowledge that on 2:15pm Tuesday, June 9, 2009 their ancestor was longing for a latte and the latest Vogue).

I’m certainly looking forward to the Collected Tweets of the Dalai Lama (complete and unabridged). His Holiness is a lovely tweeter. In the meantime we can be enlightened by James Bridle’s ‘My Life in Tweets’.

‘my life in tweets’ by James Bridle: http://booktwo.org/notebook/vanity-press-plus-the-tweetbook/

how to tweet less: http://www.twitip.com/when-tweeting-less-can-help-you-be-a-more-effective-twitter-user/

feed of haiku tweets: http://www.haikutweets.com/

Feeling rejected?

Feeling rejected? It’s a part of any author’s life. In the past you might have dipped into the alarming pages of the rejection collection, an anthology of rejection letters from around the world. After all, there is a time for wallowing. Plus there’s much to enjoy here, and you may find yourself laughing rather a lot:

‘Dear Author, I liked your letter, but I’m dead [word dead crossed out] retired.’

Sometimes it’s the rejected authors’ bathetic responses to the letters that are truly alarming. But in the end, does anyone really feel inspired and ready to write again after reading an endless procession of rejections?

Thankfully Catherine Wald, the site’s owner, seems to have given this some thought and now brings us the ‘rewards of rejection’, and the ‘celebrity corner’ (where we can be reassured by the harsh rejections experienced by well-known authors). Phew, light at the end of the tunnel!

Visit the rejection collection

dialogue and what your characters are not saying

My high school music teacher used to tell us to think about the silence between the notes.

In life drawing my teacher suggested I look at the spaces between the shapes. What is the shape between the model’s arm and their body?

I think this is a wonderful way to come at dialogue. This way you can ask, what are my characters concealing?

Call me crazy, but I’m going to go away right now and write down what my characters are not saying to each other!