Collective Soul

This blog post is a continuation of yesterday's post. And if you read the comments from yesterday's post, it's even more linked.

Yesterday, I blogged about symbolism, and I had intended to blog today about the collective unconcious. And then lo and behold, Ewoh, yet again brought insight to the table in the comments section--and raised the issue of the collective unconscious. So we're onto something, I think.

You see, some writers say they don't consciously use symbolism. I do. But I also sometimes after the fact see some fairly evocative imagery and symbolism that wasn't there when I was writing--at least not consciously.

For example . . . When I wrote Invisible Girl, I had a lot of symbolism of East and West. Buddhism and Catholicism. But when I was done, the book was chosen for the MIRA Reader's Ring book club. It got a special stamp on the cover denoting it, and book club questions were created for it. I wrote most of the book club questions, but my editor ALSO wrote a few--and one of hers was about the water imagery. Water imagery? I hadn't intended it . . . and yet, when I looked over the manuscript again, water imagery was everywhere.

The collective unconscious was at work. According to Wikipedia, the collective unconscious is:

"a reservoir of the experiences of our species"

Which is pretty apt. Case in point . . . when my son was two, he was just getting into forming sentences and putting more complex thoughts together. I took him for a walk one night in his stroller and the full moon was out. At the time we lived in South Florida--so the sky was clear, and no trees blocked the view--we had only palm trees around us. So I pointed at the moon and said, "Do you know what that is?"

And he leaned back, his bare feet lazily dangling over the stoller's side, a sippy cup in his hand, yawning, in his Winne the Pooh pajamas. And he said, "Yeah. That's God."

And at that moment, I was convinced Jung was right. How else to explain this amazing leap or transition in a toddler?

So I tend to think we as a species have a collective soul as well as individual ones.

Thoughts? Does this now alter your thoughts on symbolism? Confirm your existing beliefs?

Peace,
E

Jung and Me

The responses from my post of yesterday were very interesting, and yet again made me wonder what I consciously write--and what subconsciously filters into my writing by virtue of that Jungian portion of myself I am only half-aware of.

I know this . . . there are some things you will see in my writing--almost reflexively, without thinking about it very much. These include: positive gay role models, very loyal families that can be related--but can also be a loose assortment of friends who love each other, bad cops (with the good ones being truly heroic) and corrupt authority figures, male chuavinists always "getting theirs" in the end, martinis with green olives, characters who pray before they go to sleep, eclectic home furnishings, characters who add ketchup to scrambled eggs, and characters with the occasional neurotic elements--like I can tell you, all my characters are afraid to fly and you are NEVER going to see a pilot in my books.

On the flip side, I also know--and as far as I can tell, this is never a conscious choice--you will NOT see: pilots (see paragraph above), characters who smoke (makes me cringe--even the bad guys . . . not even THEY smoke), warm and fuzzy dads, atheists, characters who like frilly anything, characters who do any sort of "home" thing well--most of mine can't cook, and if they try something crafty, they do it poorly. I also, frequently, have characters of other races than my own--and you have to really be paying attention--I will never tell you "this character is black or Hispanic or white"--you're going to have to figure that out for yourself if that is important for you to know. You will not often, I don't think, see my characters have friends who are "same" to them--they are usually other races, other sexualities, other ethnicities, other religions. My characters listen to certain kinds of music. They do not like Jay Leno--and the thread of Letterman runs through all my books. They like cats and dogs, but hate dog slobber. They do not--in my YAs--like math.

I do NOT make character sketches. I don't write anything down. So I have to say that somehow a lot of this just "is." I will never write a smoking character because (no offense to smokers), smoking makes me physically ill. I don't even want to think about it. I never said to myself, "Gee, Character X will be a nonsmoker."

There are a zillion ways I could go on with this train of thought. When writers "free-write," I think a lot of this is unleashed. But there is definitely a component of the subconscious in all we do--and writing especially.

So . . . welcome to The Couch, as we call it on this blog. Do you see Jung dancing gleefully through your work?