How the creative mind works.

It's incredibly interesting to me how the creative mind works.

This isn't ego.  My creative mind is something off to one side that exists all by itself to which I am sometimes allowed imperfect access, which I then translate in my own bumbling way.

Two days ago, I reached in impasse in my story.  I was halfway through and had no idea what to do.  I mean, I had a general idea of where I needed to go, but no clue how to get there. 

I took a day to work.  (When did work become my day off?)

I was still clueless when I went to bed last night.  Then I dreamed about it all night.  Woke up in the morning with an idea that complicates things.  Another idea that I'd rejected earlier suddenly seemed right.

Then from those two starting points  I starting writing in my journal about what the "problems" were, and in the course of writing down the problems proceeded to solve most of them.

I now have the second half of the book. 

It wasn't forced.  I waited patiently for three days for my subconscious to come up with ideas, and then applied my conscious mind to sift through the welter of ideas to extract the ones that made the most sense.

The subconscious creative mind is a marvelous thing.