the only reason to write, is to write something with meaning
But writing with meaning means getting out of your head and into your gut ...
This is easier said than done
The key to writing with meaning is to train yourself not to listen to your head, but to listen to your writing.
Writing is a pure process. The more pure we can keep it, the better the results will be. But our heads constantly try to interrupt and overtake this creative process with its thought process. We cannot think writing. We write. The emphasis has to be on instinct.
Writing is the developing process that allows ideas to form and stir our passion to express them. Thinking is the editing process; weeding out ideas and injecting opinion. Two separate functions.
We may find that in the beginning of our writing day, the writing does not come easily. But once we get going, the writing flows with far less effort. That’s because as we start to write, we’re thinking things out, and as we progress in our writing, we’re feeling things out. Over a short period of time, sometimes only minutes, our thinking is overcome by a different consciousness - our subconscious - the source of larger truths, of meaning unaltered by conscious interpretation.
However the subconscious is a complicated and tricky little thing, because...
a lot goes on in a writer's mind.
Ideas swirl and clash. And we cannot always process these ideas in a linear fashion.
When our brain is in its “writer’s mode” it conjures images, ideas, and memories that we may mistake as solid cinematic scenes or stand-alone chapters, but that are often only fractured references to fuller information lying deep within.
Further, ideas that seem to conflict with each other, ideas that don’t seem to belong on the same page, and make you wonder why they came to you at the same time, are usually ideas that belong together in a very powerful and meaningful way, but in a way you haven’t yet learned to recognize.
So your job as the writer is to find the link between these seemingly unrelated notions in order to discover what new combined meaning they have that has been escaping your consciousness, and that you need to use to further your story.
These subconscious combinations are the marrow of EMOTIONAL STRUCTURE. They are the sounds and sights of our hero’s inner truth. His Spiritual Veracity. And everything good about him lives in them.
As the writer, you will become your hero’s advocate. You must help him find these truths and act upon them. This is the job of your work’s EMOTIONAL STRUCTURE. To help him grow and change... because he cannot defeat the villain until he defeats his demons.