Writing and...

Hi Everyone

Thought I'd jabber on about the writing process since we all have the end in sight.

I am finding the last little quarter of writing the first draft the most difficult. I have a clear defined ending but now that I am so close to the end, I am finding the last part of the climb treacherous and steep.

I presumed that when I saw the end in sight that the last part of the book would flow towards its natural conclusion but this hasn't seemed to be the case actually the reverse is true it feels like I've got big heavy weights attached to my feet.

I am just going to get stuck in there and do it though.

The writing process for me is such an interesting conundrum yet a series of strange coincidences.

At the moment I am reading Carl Jung's Autobiography - 'Memories, Dreams and Reflections' and the insights have been invaluable. I have also just watched a DVD called 'Quantum Activist' which strangely enough has direct correlation to Carl Jung's musings. Both book and DVD have been incredibly helpful in helping me to work out what I want to achieve in my writing.

I agree with Carl Jung when he says 'There is something unpredictable about the process of writing, and I cannot prescribe for myself any predetermined course,' however I have found when writing my book that although at the beginning I only had a sketch of what I wanted to achieve as the book has progressed the sketch has become more detailed and self fulfilling. Now nearing the end of the first draft I know exactly what I need to achieve, the question is how to write a book to achieve this?

I also found this comment by Carl Jung interesting, 'I know too many autobiographies, with their self-deceptions and downright lies, and I know too much about the impossibility of self-portrayal, to want to venture on any such attempt.' I agree with this comment, an autobiographical piece does seem self indulgent in essence and it's hard for me not to see it this way when I am writing it. The only way I can rid this feeling from myself is to become fully absorbed in the writing process. It also helps that I reflect on ideas regarding memory and dream time so the subject is not just primarily about myself.

I really like the way that Carl Jung describes the inner workings of his mind as a young boy and a young adult and it has helped me to look at my memories and there inward significance or insignificance. These reflections have often flung me towards some liberating yet surprising conclusions.

I don't agree with all Carl Jung's philosophies. For instance I believe that every memory is a doorway to the unconscious and one must just find the doorway. I believe that all memories are somehow interconnected whereas Carl Jung regards memories that don't jolt some kind of reflective insight within often meaningless. I think you need to see the whole pattern of memory before one can decide whether a memory has no relevance or not but then the question still remains why did we remember it in the first place? Which I think, unlike Jung, is an important question to ponder.

I think this is the only main point that him and I agree to disagree on though.

Jung says 'The way I am and the way I write are a unity. All my ideas and all my endeavours are myself. Thus the 'autobiography' is merely the dot on the i.'

I can relate to Jung's development as he wrote his autobiography. During the years in which the book was taking shape a process of transformation and objectification was taking place in Jung.

With each succeeding chapter he moved, as it were, farther away from himself, until at last he was able to see himself as well as the significance of his life from a distance. He states 'My life is a story of self realisation of the unconscious. Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation and the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to experience itself as a whole.'

'Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science. Science works with concepts of averages which are far too general to do justice to the subjective variety of an individual life. Thus it is that I have now undertaken, in my eighty-third year, to tell my personal myth. I can only make direct statements only 'tell stories.' Whether or not the stories are 'true' is not the problem. The only question is whether what I tell is my fable my truth.'

I found Carl Jung reflections on autobiography very valid and his ideas will help me to consolidate my own fable of truth with more self belief and conviction. Reading his autobiography has been a great help as the way he has written it is similar to the structure of my autobiography.

The way he thinks is clearly from a masculine perspective however and that is where our instinctive ideas differ greatly.

The next autobiography I would like to read would be Marianne Faithfull's book of the same name 'Memories, Dreams and Reflections' as I think that some of her journey fragments mirror possibilities that could have occurred in my life and I am intrigued about what she thinks and feels about what life has thrown her.