I have an awkward relationship with writing about writing. I get annoyed at the Save the Cat types for turning it into algorithmic plumbing, and at the Big Magic crowd for obscuring and mystifying the process. You might reasonably conclude from this that I’m a contrary grump.
BUT.
The demo for Neon Apex: Beyond the Limit came out this week, and while I was writing its narrative I felt like angels were disco dancing on my neurons. I felt luminous. Everything was feeding into it. While I was busy ‘procrastinating’, articles about whether black holes destroy information were connecting to the holographic principle and an essay about whether there might be something below spacetime, and Alice in Wonderland started muscling in on the action.
At a certain point I gave up on worrying that I wasn’t typing and just went with the process. I read, I absent-mindedly wandered around the house, half-making sandwiches and contemplating the nature of reality, occasionally returning to my keyboard to type. I felt weird and spaced out and like I might float off on a breeze. Anna, my wife, gave up trying to talk to me.
I’m pretty pleased with the outcome—a paranoid story about existential dread of technology and the fear that you have no idea what reality is. It’s a strange, wonky, scratchy story that has no business being attached to a racing game, but even if you don’t like it I think you’d have to concede that it’s a big swing.
The writing experience probably had something to do with doing the whole thing in the space of a week. Normally, I pick at my creative projects, writing in bursts of 20 minutes, or an hour or maybe two. I was working on the Neon Apex demo pretty solidly for a week. It was all that was in my brain. I couldn’t and didn’t really think about anything else.
Here’s Rick Rubin talking about exactly this kind of creative experience:
It's helpful to know the information we need doesn't all come from inside of us. Maybe none of it comes from inside of us, maybe it all comes from outside of us, whether that be mystical, physical or practical. I've had experiences where I'm looking for an answer for something, curious, holding it lightly in my consciousness. Not working on it, I just know there's this problem to be solved. And then I'll be out and something will happen in the world directly related to answering the question. It doesn't happen once in a while, it happens all the time if you're open to the communication. We're getting information all the time. There's so much more information coming at us than we can digest, so we pick and choose unconsciously certain data points and then, based on those data points, we make up a story about what happens. It's different for everybody.
There's so much wisdom all around us all of the time, coming in the form of nature, the culture, people speaking at a coffee shop, if you're open and if you're paying attention. I would even go further to say that if you invite it, it might work even better. … Because of the subtle nature of the information that we're looking for, it's not getting shouted at us. It's the thing that, if you weren't really quiet and really paying attention, you would likely miss. So we have to quiet ourselves and we have to live in this constant state of looking for clues, looking for information. What can I learn? What shapes align? Where are their connections? If I look deeper, what's happening? That's the practice, and for me meditation is key. It may not be everyone. The other point of this is we all function in different ways. We each have to find what works for us and um and try things and see what works.
(Here’s where I sourced the quote, but it’s worth noting that the video creator has nabbed the audio from elsewhere and not bothered to say where.)
I had a similar experience at one point during the development phase of Badkin, the project Anna Readman and I are currently shopping around, but that was all druids and fungi and Lovecraft and working mens’ clubs.
Some writers seem to treat this sort of state of mind as literal magic. The comedian and writer Lucy Beaumont says that ideas literally exist out there in the universe and sometimes cross paths with your brain. Elizabeth Gilbert claims much the same thing in Big Magic, and it’s hard to tell whether she’s saying it with a straight face because it serves her creative project to treat it as true, or whether she actually believes it. Rick Rubin seems to be hedging his bets, but I haven’t read his book, The Creative Act, and it’s possible he elaborates in there.
I find it productive not poke too hard at whatever was going on while I wrote the Neon Apex demo story, but if you pinned me down I’d say it was some combination of flow state, my subconscious seeking fodder for the mental compost heap, and necessity meaning that I had to use whatever came to hand.
But it sounds boring (and reductive) to put it like that.
Writing the demo was everything you want the creative experience to be, but I couldn’t live my entire life that way. At a certain point, I’d start licking the cat or talking to the plumbing. But maybe just the hours of 9am to midday…?
Meanwhile, please download the Neon Apex: Beyond the Limit demo. Even if my story sounds like horseshit, it’s worth having a look for Andrew’s everything-including-the-kitchen sink, sensory overload visual approach.
If cosmic rays have ever struck your brain while you were making something I’d really like to hear about it.
Next week: back to Vertigo.