MWF 2010 authors on… dreams
I am fascinated by the writing process. ‘What has this to do with dreams?’ you may well ask. In a recent interview in The Age, Bret Easton Ellis says: ‘So much of writing is like a dream, you’re not conscious …’. This reminded me of what Siri Husvedt describes in her new book The Shaking Woman: A History of My Nerves as the phenomenon of ‘automatic writing’, ‘the feeling that words are being dictated to the author rather than actually composed’, that a kind of collective unconscious helps us along. This, of course, is not to deny the agony of composition.
Feel free to share your own responses to the topic, or to the authors’ responses, in the comments.
Posted on 18 August 2010, in Author info and tagged Carol Bacchi, dreams, MWF authors on. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.
Melbourne Writers Festival blog 
This waking dream business happens to me quite often. Some other level of consciousness kicks in and it is indeed as though the words are writing themselves. I reckon that as a writer, I can tap into a subconscious process that is far richer then the level at which I write a shopping list . . . It’s a moment of sheer exhilaration and I work though it, telling myself to shut up and listen.
Composition is sheer discipline.