The Amazing, Creative, Wonderful, Unknowable Mind

Having just "finished" (are they ever, really?) my debut novel, and feeling confident enough to upload it, added to writing the first draft of the prequel to my debut novel a mere twenty days ago during NaNo, it strikes me as miraculous how our minds work.  One inconsequential decision in one book, led to something I used in the second.  Never knowing how the first connected to the second.

I'm a pantster.  Meaning I go with my gut.  Never plot.  Except for in my head.  Letting things stew, mull, ferment.  Then with a sufficient nudge, I begin capturing my idea more permanently.  If my subconscious sends me a signal to put in, say, a moose, I do it.  Without questioning.  Then forget it.  And wouldn't you know?  Later I grab this brilliant idea passing through my brain cells on this perfect use for that moose, complete with an underlying meaning as well.

How cool is that?

Writing is about discovery.  It entails maybe ten percent participation by the author--sitting down, typing something, anything, to warm up the muse, signaling the conscious and the unconscious minds to start gathering things.  Then while you do what you can with no plan, no safety net, no map, you receive these wonderful nuggets, bread crumbs leading you to The End.

The sheer mystical magical mystery of it all places me firmly in the state of awe and wonder.

I am so blessed to be an author.

P.S.
Courtesy of A Word A Day, this was too timely not to share: 

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

My stories run up and bite me in the leg -- I respond by writing them down -- everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off. -Ray Bradbury, science-fiction writer (b. 1920)