Writing On The Dark Side

Sometimes R. gets home to find me in the dark, tapping away at the keyboard, enthralled by whatever I'm working on.  He thinks this is hilarious.  Why don't I put on the lights, he asks.  It would only take a moment.  He says I'm like a monk, cloistered away.  

Yup.  He's right.

My new computer has a backlit keyboard.  Not that I look at the keys so much (I touch-type, so there's no need) but it does provide an extra glow that's comforting, in its way.  This encourages me to keep sitting there in the dark.  But I admit I enjoy the metaphor of writing on the dark side!

I love Jung's theory of the Shadow and am using it, thematically, in the novel I'm writing.   When we strive to only face our goodness and deny the darker side of ourselves, this kind of repression takes up a lot of energy.  The unconcious mind becomes desperate to relieve itself of this pressure, so it pushes its own darkness onto other people -- in other words, we project our own faults onto others to save us having to accept them in ourselves.  "A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way," said Jung, "and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour."

If we were writers who never wrote in the darkness, maybe we'd be cutting out a vital part of our stories.  We often know our characters' faults and try to love them fully, regardless, and sometimes we also know what they project onto others.  As writers, when we work on dark material we might start to acknowledge our own Shadows too.  This, claims Jung, is a moral process, for by knowing our darkness we can learn to control it and stop it from harming others:  "Everyone carries a Shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious one always has a chance to correct it...but if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected." 

But to be frank, the real reason I write in the dark is because I'm too fixated to switch on the light. 

Talk about obsessed.  Snort.  

Yours truly is featured on KL Pereira's Dead Diciples blog today.  Am really very proud.  No doubt KL will be featured here soon, inspiring lady that she is...watch this space.  We're monstering together! ;)

Comments

[KL Pereira]

All the best things come from the dark.

[Sue]

KL, that's so true.