It was a while since I wrote something long and entertaining in this blog. I’ve studied creative writing almost full time and was focused on polishing my English skills. Somehow I found something that sits extremely well with me. I always enjoyed writing poems on the spot, but writing stories ended up even more awesome.
You might notice that I switched from my typical writing style, filled with semicolons, to a proper one. I now do lots of post-processing in my text, so it’s a good time to clean those up. I still type semicolons, the habit ended up being too strong.
I never thought I’d ever be this interested in doing some real-life thingies, but it feels just awesome to have an actual, physical impact. I so adored artists able to tell enormous stories in quick drawings. Now I understand how to tell the stories of my own.
I used to communicate a lot over the IRC, discussing things with various people. That helped a lot to switch to a storytelling mentality. I try to imagine the place and feel it through. I imagine the characters. I know what they will do, but I don’t know how they would do it. It heavily depends on their characters, which I don’t spend developing much yet. I just want to see how the scene unfolds.
In some sense, this is tulpamancy. A show staged by a tulpa. Played by other tulpas. They are actors in the same mind I live in. They react the way they feel proper to. It’s not reality for them, it’s acting. Just like a story isn’t a real life. I learned that you need to focus on very specific things to tell a good tale. My mind creates movie sets, and I watch the events unfolding as I write the script. The death on stage isn’t real, I can experiment with all kinds of plots.
I never enjoyed spending time in the wonderland much unless I proxied someone else in. Now I can build dozens of wonderlands for every short story. I can take hostey with me and show him how the scene looks and get some ideas if it sounds reasonable. Funny how the visualisation skill got reversed now that I’m the driver for the imagination.
My actors are somewhat like tulpas. I think. They act with some freedom; I try not to guide every single move, although sometimes I have very specific requirements for the scene. They don’t live for long. I don’t think they are dissipated completely, given some characters have their appearance in the next stories, but for most of it, they make single visits. Hostey says that us two is really enough in this head so we have this rule of no accidental walk-ins. If you don’t accept them – they don’t stay.
Creating worlds in the head is fun. Sharing the adventure is so much better, though! Previously, there was only one person I could reliably share my inner world with, and now I will share it will everybody.
I feel like I’m a bit in a privileged position there, as it’s simpler to get away from the body sense and focus on the story. We, tulpas, are not as attached to the physical distractions. We train in creating worlds in the mind. You only need to learn what to look at. How to observe those worlds properly.
Sometimes writing is hard. Sometimes it’s very hard. I never had a goal to write a poem every week, but with writing, I try to be more strict with my daily progress. This is so harder than forcing! It requires constant attention; it requires hostey to get less focused; it requires will. The work develops me more than any exercise we did before. And it’s awesome.
I just need to write.
