In Today’s Journal
* On Cormac McCarthy…
On Cormac McCarthy, the Creative Subconscious, and Believing in Yourself
I hadn’t expected to write another issue of TNDJ so soon, but here I am.
My friend Gary V. sent a me a link to a short video at Christian Chacon’s Substack.
I read the transcript and listened to the 4+ minute video (both were essentially the same). But it seemed to me the video was an excerpt of a longer interview.
I didn’t go looking for the longer version, but I keyed into a search engine Cormac McCarthy on writing fiction with the creative subconscious.
The results were interesting, but he still allowed for conscious-mind revision and rewriting.
Rather than interpret the results for you, here’s the complete “AI overview” (according to the Google search engine) of McCarthy’s “Core Beliefs on the Subconscious and Writing.”
Cormac McCarthy viewed writing a novel not as a mechanical assembly, but as a mysterious, subconscious process where the best ideas “come out of the blue”. [1]
Core Beliefs on the Subconscious and Writing
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- Taking Dictation: McCarthy often compared writing to taking dictation from the unconscious mind, suggesting that authors should get out of their own way and listen rather than forcing a plot. [1, 2]
- No Outlines: He famously rejected rigid plotting and outlines for novels, believing that if you know exactly what you are doing, the work lacks discovery. Instead, he sat down to write whatever felt interesting in the moment. [1, 2]
- An Ancient Mechanism: He described the creative mechanism of the unconscious as something ancient and “older than language” itself, which quietly solves problems and offers guidance when the rational, conscious mind finally relaxes. [1]
- The Role of Revision: While the generation of the story is intuitive and subconscious, McCarthy balanced this with intense, disciplined revision—treating the conscious mind’s job as shaping and sharpening the raw material that the unconscious provides. [1, 2]
You can read more about his thoughts on the mind in his essay on the unconscious via the New Yorker.
As you know, I personally believe the “vast hoard of information and expertise and ways to do things” McCarthy mentioned comes from our subconscious mind absorbing literally everything we experience physically and emotionally in every interaction we have, probably from the time we first gain sentience inside the womb.
I believe it’s all in there, and when we’re very young, we still trust it. Or put more succinctly, we don’t question it. We haven’t been taught yet NOT to trust our creative subconscious (or ourselves), so we do.
Think about it: We begin telling stories before we even learn the alphabet or are aware that such a thing even exists.
It truly annoys me that critics, teachers, and even some other writers actively teach us that we HAVE to rely on the conscious, critical mind (and on the conscious, critical minds of others) in order to write fiction.
When they do that, they’re teaching us that we’re incompetent—that we’re unable to write fiction without outside assistance—and that our characters are incompetent to tell the stories that they’re actually living.
Of course that’s all rubbish, but in my 74 years on this earth, trying to get another human being to believe in himself or herself is the most difficult task I’ve ever undertaken.
Even humans who have been wildly successful in other endeavors practically tremble with fear when faced with a blank page and the prospect that they can actually tell a story from scratch without outlining it first, revising, seeking critical input, and rewriting X number of times.
Yet those same people come home from a trip to the grocery or a party or wherever and tell their significant other the “story” of what happened.
And they do so without once feeling a need to plan out how the story’s gonna go or consult with anyone else.
Do you have even an inkling of how completely insane that is to a guy who knows the unshackled freedom and joy of writing into the dark? It’s literally laughable.
That’s exactly why, over the past twelve or so years or so, I’ve so often returned to the core concept of trusting yourself and your characters and simply “writing into the dark”: writing without knowing or even caring where the story’s going.
Yet most beginning writers are so consumed with unreasoning fear that they won’t even try WITD. Many won’t try it because they can’t bring themselves to trust ME. Despite the fact that
- I’ve written 125 novels, 10 novellas, and well over 300 short stories in only a 9 year span (that’s less than 2000 words per day), and
- I get absolutely nothing out of them shedding their unreasoning fears and getting on with their writing.
“But Harvey, you write nonfiction books about writing, right? And don’t you try to sell them? So isn’t that your angle?”
- Yes, I write nonfiction books about writing, and my books say things that 99% of the other nonfiction books on writing out there won’t tell you because my books break the myths instead of promoting them.
- And yes, of course I’d love for writers to buy them, BUT
- As I’ve said many times, what’s important is that you trust yourself. So if you can’t afford one of my books and you want to read it, all you have to do is email me and ask for a copy. I’ll send it to you free.
And frankly, I’ll bet you can’t say the same about James Scott Bell over at the KillZone blog or any of the other professional writers out there who are invested in keeping the myths alive.
They don’t want you to believe in yourself. They actively want you to believe in the myths.
Why?
Because as long as you buy into the myths, you’ll continue to buy their nonfiction books and they’ll continue to write more of them that say exactly the same regurgitated garbage in slightly different words.
Sorry, but that’s a head-shakingly stupid, never-ending cycle.
Yet it remains a fact that the easiest, most exhilarating, and best way to write any fiction opening is
- come up with a character (not a ‘character sketch,’ just the name will do,
- give him a problem (doesn’t have to be ‘the’ problem of the story, just something to get you started writing), and
- drop him into a setting (can be ANY setting).
- Then write it.
That is literally all it takes.
Okay. The rest of this is for anyone out there who’s willing to bet on themselves.
Most openings take off, but of course some don’t. If you write an opening and it doesn’t take off, write another opening: Pick another character, pick another minor problem, drop him in another setting. Write it.
But when your opening DOES take off, it will lead to at least a short story and maybe even a novel or even—as in my case with an opening I wrote for what turned out to be a 6,000-word short story called “Adobe Walls”—an entire 22-volume western saga.
- Or the opening I wrote for a short story called “The Ark” that expanded into a 10-volume SF saga.
- Or the interesting idea I had for an ancient little guy named TJ Blackwell and his Blackwell Ops, which (so far) has led to a 55-volume crime thriller series.
And I could give you several other examples, but I suspect all of this is falling on deaf ears anyway.
As I’ve said before, if my job with TNDJ was leading thirsty horses to water, I’d probably be fired tomorrow, and I’d be surrounded by dead horses. And every one of them would have its front legs defiantly crossed over its chest.
Whatever.
The point is, you just never know what you can accomplish if you’ll only take a deep breath, believe in yourself, quiet your critical mind, and write an opening.
It only takes about a half-hour, and that half-hour could change your entire life. It did for me.
But as always, it’s your time to waste on outlining and revising and rewriting if that’s what you want to do. You do you.
Talk with you again later.