Channelling the Daemons
Guest Post by author Berengaria di Rossi
“Where do you get your inspiration?” is the most common, and for some of us most tiring, question writers get. Where? Some from this, from that, found it under a rock in the back yard, my grandma had this quilt, the cat literally dragged it in and well....
Doesn’t much matter what you say, people just want to know where the stories they read and like come from.
But sometimes it happens that your best or most popular story you didn’t write.
It was like a window in the sky opened up and the story downloaded straight into your brain. Or maybe a passing ghost laid a hand on your shoulder and whispered “listen to this” into your ear. Or an old fashioned Greek daemon seeped out of the wallpaper at night and smeared it all over your face while you slept.
Explain that one.
This happy little gifted story may be only a fragment, perhaps it’s in several pieces, or possibly it’s already recognisable as a complete work.
And it’s good. No, not just good, it’s fucking brilliant.
But you didn’t write it. It’s not yours, you just wrote it down and you have no earthly clue where it came from.
One thing is for sure, though, if you do publish it, for the rest of your writerly life you’ll hear the same thing in different versions from readers: “I like your stuff, but THAT ONE is just awesome.”
Yeah, that one is just awesome. And the bravest of us will admit our non-authorship with a beleaguered, semi-pained expression and a sigh that could break the hearts of china dolls because, frankly, while we’re grateful, it niggles.
See, some stories an author sweats blood to get right. You severe fingers and suck the marrow from your bones to place it into your creation and watch it jerk into life. THOSE are the stories you want the applause for, the ones you laboured over, not the ones you got handed on a silver plate.
And yet, that’s what will happen.
So what did happen? Where did that annoying, infuriatingly brilliant piece of storycraft come from?
Guess what, you channelled it.
Now, maybe channelling sounds to you like New Age hogwash that some flowy-robbed creature would dish out. And yet, that’s the only answer there is.
You were targeted by a spitball from the collective unconscious. Congrats.
But what is that, the collective unconscious? Is the same as intuition – the amassing of small environmental details that suddenly ripen into gut feelings and odd knowings - or are we into Jungian territory with all its attendant voodoo?
The world we live in is made up of energy. Everything has an energy, an energetic field and it’s not too far outside of the realm of possibility that story, in its ur-form, is a part of our unique, collective human energy.
In as much as we are human, we can tap into this energy.
Sometimes people in totally different parts of the world come up with the same invention or concept at the exact same time…and then litigate for years over patents and copyright, over who thought of it first. They all did, because they all tapped into the energy flow, the part of Conscious where that particular idea was on the move.
The place where the daemons reside.
That’s what channelling is. Tapping into that moving energy, seeing what comes flying out and focusing it into your work.
As with all things, some people are more skilled at it and others less. Some can nip in and out at will (or alternatively with an illegal substance) while others are shocked into awareness by an unexpected download, or an imp with sticky paws.
It amounts to the same thing in the end. Story is out there and can be brought in here, either by design or accident. In chunks, sequences or whole cloth, because we are all contributing to it all the time.
That’s the source of it all.
So, what can any author say when asked for the 100th time where they got the inspiration for that totally awesome story? The best one they’ve ever written?
Beats me, but I think it came from you. (And you and you and you and you, ad astra.)
Find Berengaria’s works on Wattpad, with her publishing debut in Don’t Read This Book After Dark, releasing October 31st, 2024!
