Stream of Consciousness Writing

Stream of consciousness writing is absolutely fascinating. You put pencil to paper and just write every word that comes to mind, paying no attention to grammar, spelling, or even coherence. It's a near seamless transition from brain to paper; true mind to hand writing.

I've done this a couple of times, although I find it a fight to not think about grammar and such. The editing book I'm currently reading, Revision and Self-Editing from the Write Great Fiction series, suggests a similar technique to get into your characters' heads; it's sort of like the Write or Die tactic that I first learned of during NaNoWriMo (I learned a LOT during NaNo; it was like a crash course in the butt-in-chair-hands-on-keyboard technique and everything even remotely related).

While I was waiting for my sister to get out of class today, I sat in my car and started brainstorming. I've currently sworn off writing fiction until school lets out, but I'm allowed to brainstorm. The reason my brain was suddenly overflowing with ideas? In history, whilst discussing the 50s, my teacher mentioned an author. I can't remember his name now, or the name of his book, but he wrote a book entirely using the stream of consciousness method. Wow.

My teacher had us listen to an audio of the author reading it, and I was mesmerized. It was an endless stream of babble, and I was scrabbling to try to find meaning in it as the guy threw out phrases like "God is Pooh Bear" and "the utter darkness that is death."

But, for some reason I can't fathom, it got my mind working. All through the rest of history class my brain was frozen on a phrase I'd heard. But in my mind, it had stopped being a phrase by the author and had become the title of a nameless project I'd been working on for months. Sitting there, the project took off in a dozen different directions at once, all under the heading of this new title.

This is one more thing to add to my to-do list for summer - practice stream of consciousness writing!