The Enid Blyton Society

Rob Houghton wrote:Well in my case...and I know this sounds weird/presumptuous/maniacal/etc etc but all the while I was writing 'Narrowboat' I had the feeling that I wasn't writing it but some other mind was controlling what I wrote - lol - maybe it was Enid. I was...'channelling Enid'.

Stranger things have happened Rob.

mind you, I've always felt like that when I'm writing creative pieces...like I wouldn't be capable of writing such stuff and someone or something else is controlling it all. I guess that's how imagination works. I certainly don't feel responsible for my creative writing - it just happens without me really trying.

Well,

Many say that Enid really only had five or six plots which she kept reusing. Writing this way greatly reduces the need for pre-planning or making an outline. Because you have already pretty much written the same book several times before. She knows then roughly where she needs to be at the end of X number of pages, how far the plot has to have developed,

Of course, some say there are only about five or six plots in all of literature . . .

Rob Houghton wrote:mind you, I've always felt like that when I'm writing creative pieces...like I wouldn't be capable of writing such stuff and someone or something else is controlling it all. I guess that's how imagination works. I certainly don't feel responsible for my creative writing - it just happens without me really trying.

Maybe you don't realise you are the genius who is writing that.

I too don't think having a rough plan necessarily contradicts the "the private cinema" statement. I was actually thinking of this last night when I was making a video. When I was in Rarotonga I knew exactly what was going to go into my video and I filmed accordingly. Of course, I can't control what went into my raw footage, so I left that to chance, but I knew what direction it was going to take.

Writing blog posts is also the same for me. I can't write at all unless I have pictures to write around. The same happened during my research paper.

Rob Houghton wrote:I agree - I write in exactly the same way - but I don't believe Enid used this technique without first having a rough plan on paper - as has often been claimed in the past!

I have always written in this way, and thought it was normal, and was surprised to discover it was supposedly a 'gift' lol!

On the few occasions I done any short story writing I've usually started by jotting a few ideas for the plot and character names with main characteristics even if in some ways the plot unfolds as you write from your imagination.
I just don't see someone writing one hundred and twenty or so pages purely from that theatre of the mind.

I think I can get close to Enid's 'under-mind' condition when I am dozing. Then I am aware of what I am dreaming, but it is definitely not the conscious me who is controlling the storyline as I am constantly surprised by what happens.

What I cannot do is type out the story while it is happening. And even when fully awake it would not be worth typing up because it is illogical; by which I mean things appear and change on a whim in a surreal inconsistent world.

So I think the skill (or luck) that people like Enid have is not only to be able to tap into their under-mind, but also that it tells stories in a logical way.