If you found this rambly nonsense useful or interesting, it'd mean the world to me if you could share it :) Much love x

It's the battle between your conscious mind (technical side of writing) and your subconscious mind (creative side). I do get this. And finding the balance is the tricky part. Thanks for sharing this. :-)

Love it - Something fascinating about harnessing that dream-logic and real magic into the established framework of a story. The eternal struggle!

Yes!! The bit about how you know things but need to kind of fall back down and "taking the leash off" I completely agree with! It is definitely a curve everyone has to get over at some point.

This came at the perfect moment in time. Thank you for posting a video like this. I’ve been in a writer slump for quite some time and this is a good reminder of why writing was ever important in the first place. It’s all about the magic in the art, the joy at spinning words into something more, and finding adventure along the way. Story craft is so important and for me, something I’m constantly trying grow and learn in (I suspect that will be a constant in life). But balancing it with the art and the love of story telling can get lost. Remembering the magic of why we read and why we wanted to write, lights the fire again.

This makes sense. I am new to your channel so I haven't seen all of your videos, but I understand that. I am a planner and just wrote my first novel for NaNo this year, but I did just a basic outline with a list of what needed to happen in each scene, but the rest was free - just write until that was accomplished. Granted, I'm not working on a big fantasy (yet - that's next) but it gave me a bit of freedom to write what I was seeing in my head. I love freewriting but need the direction in my novel. I have found that some pieces of writing advice are too structured for me. I took Rachael Stephen's Story Magic Academy and it worked great for me - easy to follow and made writing my novel a much easier path than other tutorials would have led me down. Sometimes we do need to take a step back to see the other path we never knew was there... :) Good luck!

This is spot on, its always good to know the rules, but good to dream and let the leash off, let yourself write and let the magic flow!

What I love about your videos is how sincere and open you are in sharing your experience as a writer. What you were describing reminds me of a G.K. Chesterton quote "The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” The more I grow as a writer, and as I grow older, I find that my abstract and surreal persona from my college years has become much smaller in my creative process. I don't really see that as a bad thing though. It just depends. I think the definitive part of writing should be less so on the craft or "rules" of writing a novel, but more so in the understanding the truth you want to share. Once you understand that inherent truth, I think no matter how creative, strange, surreal or "rule breaking" the content becomes, it is valuable in art, merely for the fact that you are articulating truth in your own personal way.

Interesting topic. I personally don't view myself super technical when it comes to writing but can understand the idea very well. In a sense I can see how bringing the technical aspects to the forefront while writing can feel a bit smothering as far as imaginative sparks go. I also think there is another side where, in my experience, fell in love with the magic of writing when I was a child, but over the years refining my craft has led me to try break down the process of structuring and understand what makes a story. I am transitioning into a completely new form and genre of writing and even though I had some hesitations, I was more open to the idea because I have built a good foundation over the years when it comes to story telling. So in a way it may open up more possibilities as far as your trajectory in the future. You may be more willing to write in a form that you might not have years ago when you were operating more intuitively than technically. Sorry for the essay, but thanks for the video. Gave me a lot to think about 🤔☺

Brilliant Ramblevlog Ben. You're spot on, you need to loosen the shackles of techniques to allow the magic of whimsy to escape.