“Help, I’m stuck in a human body! Call a priest!”
Lately I’ve come to see the act of writing in a whole different light. Yes, writing for me is sharing my twisted imagination with the masses, that’s always been a fact. And writing is certainly a creative outlet for me. However, writing for me is also a form of exorcism. What do I mean by this? Allow me to explain:
When I have a story, until I start to write it down the story stays stored in my mind. However, in the ever-present chaos of my mind, the story takes on a fluid quality. Ideas and aspects for the story change every second, with some things being added in, others being taken out, and others evolving or taking on a new shape. Frankly, it’s a little annoying that the stories stored in my head can’t stay in the same shape for much longer than a day or so.
But when I start to outline the story, especially when it’s a novel, the story starts to calm down a little. And when I finally write it down, the story starts to solidify, to take on a definite form. Finally the story, once written out, is now concrete, immutable. The only thing that can change the story now is my will or the suggestion of an editor, and that is not experimental change like in my head, but change that is meant to improve the story once it has been enacted.
So in a strange way, writing for me is a two-part exorcism: I am exorcising the story from my head and onto paper, through which I can share it with as many people as I want, and it is an exorcism on the story, taking out that mercurial aspect and allowing the story to harden into a definite form that doesn’t change on me or the readers. And since I’m constantly coming up with ideas for stories, I have plenty of exorcising to do!
So in this new year of 2013, I hope to exorcise plenty of stories and share them with you. Wish me luck, and I wish you all a Happy New Year!
Rami Ungar The Writer 