Aiming The Subconscious

Ever get a killer idea in the shower? And wonder where it came from and how you came to think it?

My physics prof told me this story and it may not be exactly true. I believe the truth is pretty close.

Once upon a time there were these missionaries in South America. They'd left the temperate North America to work in equatorial Ecuador. But instead of wearing pith helmets and tramping around the rain forests and doing whatever missionaries do, they went to a mountain top and built a radio station--a honking huge radio station.

The radio station was intended to broadcast world-wide via short-wave radio. There was something special about this spot on the globe that helps radio propagation. The important detail is that this radio station had significant effective radiated power.

All the equipment has been set up and tested successfully. They built the tower, installed the antennas, hooked everything up, and started broadcasting.

This station used what's called a "dipole antenna." You can make one by just cutting two straight rods of metal to the same length, lining them up sticking straight out in opposite directions, and hooking them up to your radio transmitter. These rods are called antenna elements. Each element is like a tuning fork in that it has a natural resonant frequency, but for electricity, not sound. If you change the rod's length, the resonant frequency changes. In a broadcast radio station, you match the antenna's resonant frequency to the transmitter's broadcast frequency.

It seems that the humidity in Ecuador interacted with the antenna elements when they were pumping a lot of power through them. It caused the ends of the antenna elements to erode in a process not unlike Saint Elmo's Fire. This shortened the length of the elements and causing antennas to become de-tuned. The radio station quit broadcasting.

The radio engineer struggled to solve this problem without success. It looked like the project would fail.

Defeated, he went to bed, and he had a dream of two snakes made of fire who were fighting. The snakes coiled around themselves and then bit each other in the mouth. This formed a loop made of two fire-snakes.

The radio engineer woke up with the idea for a "folded dipole element." By folding the ends of the two elements back toward themselves and joining them into a single piece of metal, there were no end-point to erode in the humid air and electricity. Without the metal eroding, the length remained the same and the antenna remained in tune. Huzzah, the folded dipole antenna proved an elegant solution.

(Dr. Google tells me the antenna is actually the "quad loop" whose driven element is indeed a loop, and that the dreamer's name was Clarence Moore.)

This story illustrates my recipe for aiming my subconscious to solve problems. Think through the problem from every conceivable angle. Work like a dog fully engaging the conscious mind. (You can call this phase programming the mental computer.) Consciously fill your noggin with everything that's known about the problem and everything you've tried that does not work. Engage your emotions and become passionate about solving the problem and how much you want the solution.

Then let go of the problem. Consciously set it aside. Go Running. Take a shower. Paint an apartment. Plant a garden. Do something unrelated to the problem at hand. When you've tired yourself out go to bed and sleep in--with a notepad beside the bed. Or by the shower.

While you're doing these Other Things, your subconscious should be beavering away at the facts you loaded it up with during phase one. How hard your subconscious works for you will be a function of your passion for solving the problem. With your conscious mind loosened up your subconscious will have a clear channel to send the solution to you.

This is similar to the process I described that A. E. Van Vogt followed. If you're stuck on a plot-problem, you should try both approaches and see what works best for you.

P.S. If you'd like a chuckle at the expense of HCJB and Radio Catolica Nacional, check out this story of how some risque QSL cards got sent out.

Using Dreams

I have noticed that some of the best stories come from dreams while some of my most boring conversations are listening to other people recount their dreams.

I hope that if I ever tell you one of my dreams, it'll be a one-liner and relevant to you: "I dreamed you were a CIA agent and your mission was to seduce Rani Mukerji." To the contrary, I've found that I'm seldom any more bored than when someone tells me something they dreamed that might be quite significant to them, but it is significant only to them. By keeping things short, I hope that if you are bored by my fevered ravings, you won't be bored for long.

The fact that I dreamed about you can be majorly creepy because it means you have invaded my subconscious and you might not appreciate the unwanted (subconscious) attention. Thus, if you were Rani Mukerji and if I had dreamed about you (I haven't.), I probably shouldn't say anything to you.

If you can relate to what I just said about dreams, what makes you think anybody wants to hear about your writing project?

Particularly, that hot chick or dude you made into the hero's love-interest who bears a creepy resemblance to the hot chick/dude you're talking to. I know a guy who who wrote all the attractive females in his writing group into his stories. Repressed sexual fantasies aside, most people need a more compelling reason to hear about your work-in-progress than the mere fact that you are writing it. World-building is a most enjoyable past-time, but sharing the details of your future-history with someone at a dinner party is a great way to not get invited back.

Talk about works in progress should be confined to strategy sessions with other authors wherein you trade hints and tips about how to get over tough plot points or other mechanical details of bringing a work to completion. If you're in the midst of such a session with another author and think, "what's WITH this guy?" you should do everything in your power to make sure he doesn't think the same about your work. I find it delightful to read conversations between authors advising each other on howto make the magic happen.

Of course, those conversations are more interesting when they are between writers you admire. You might be less enthralled by exchanges between unknowns.

There is a time and a season for you to shout from the rooftops, "Sir, or Madam, will you read my book. It took me years to write, will you take a look," but that comes after your work is at a mature state, or you have a reputation and a following. Until then, I suggest you only tease out the choicest details.

But I said that sometimes the best stories come from dreams. The modern mind doesn't quite know what to do with dreams. I am not one to interpret them, but I will try to mine them for story ideas. I don't try to write up my unconscious mind's jumbled narratives unrefined.

Instead I've had story elements occur in dreams that I adapt into stories. For interest, a dream of my High School (that you'd find boring) was distinguished by the appearance of a certain trouble shooter. He wasn't quite human, and he wasn't quite divine. I didn't understand this character, his motives, or his means of solving problems, but I thought this general impression would make a useful depiction of a "trans-human" character. Such would be dispatched by Serious Adults to Fix Something. That turned into my first novel, which is safely ensconced within a desk drawer.


I think that dreams are a treasure-trove of story-ideas and solutions to story-problems, but they are unruly beasts who need to be pointed in the right direction, and their content never taken at face-value.