Banking the Fire

Photo by Nathan Lindhal on Unsplash

Sometimes, you need to be in a particular emotional space in order to make the story go. Some writers, like me, pretty much always do this - you might never need it, or you might only need it once. There's a decent amount of advice already out there about how to get into the right emotional state, and a nontrivial amount about how to get back out, but today I want to talk about a secret, third thing. 

Sometimes, you need to preserve the continuity of that emotional state between writing sessions. And sometimes, the emotion you're writing from is not a functional or comfortable one. Holding on to the warm glow of hope against all odds for the weeks or months it takes to complete a short story or a few chapters of a novel might be difficult, but it isn't unsafe. Actively keeping yourself in a state of rage, terror, grief, or despair for the same length of time though? That's not just unpleasant, it's dangerous. Most times, you want to come out of it when you're not writing, but if the emotional throughline is too delicate with withstand the subtle differences when you try to recreate your original headspace, obviously that isn't going to work. And seriously, this bears repeating, you cannot spend months repeatedly reopening self-inflicted emotional wounds. You will damage yourself. That's where the technique I'm about to describe comes in. 

Locate where the emotion sits in your body. Usually, it's gonna be somewhere in your chest or abdomen, but if you sincerely feel like it's in your left kneecap, go with it. Now, picture that feeling, that center of emotional and somatic sensation, This may require you to stretch your brain a little if you've been writing from something in the space of sadness or fear and you're used to only "hot" emotions being fire. Sometimes it'll end up being a weird color, which is fine as long as you can get it to otherwise behave like regular fire. If absolutely necessary, you can let it give off cold instead of heat, but that's really not ideal for what we're gonna do with it. For me, it's more important to be able to feel what I'm doing than to "see" it, but you might be different. 

Okay, now you've got that clear in your head, give yourself a second to just experience it. Give it your full attention. Assure yourself of it's reality. Know how easily it can keep going as long as you continue to feed it. If the answer is "pretty small", "reasonable campfire", "it would fit in a fireplace", you can go ahead and skip the next step. If it's bigger than that, we're gonna need to get it a little smaller before we proceed. 

If you have not already done so, turn off your writing music. It's best to do this step without any music on, but if you do not vibe with that, go ahead and switch to something emotionally neutral or, failing that, something that's in the same emotional direction but less intense. Change position. If you can, go into another room. Or outside. We're trying to reduce the "fuel" our fire has. Once you've done what you can in that area, see what size it feels like now. Still pretty big? No worries. Take a proper full breath, from your diaphragm if you can. That one was just for practice, and because your breathing was probably not great while you were writing. Now, do it again, but this time, on the exhale, see/feel the fire getting smaller. Keep doing that until it's down to a manageable size. If your lips start feeling tingly, take a short break to breath kinda shallowly for a minute. But try to hold onto the visualization. 

Photo by Andrey Andreyev on Unsplash

Once it's a size you can work with, start putting stuff around it. Move the coals together, and put something that holds heat and resists flame around the side.  I use dirt, but you can use rocks, if you'd rather. When you've got the first layer around it, start building up and in - you want it partly covered, so you can still see some of the coals, but there's no longer any visible flame. Put a couple extra chunks of wood on top of the coals. If you put your hand near it, you should still be able to feel the heat coming off the top, but only at close range. 

You can now go about your day normally, and not worry about preserving the headspace you need for your story. It's there, tidied away and protected so it can't spread and won't burn itself out. You should be able to check it whenever you like and feel it still smoldering, but you should also be able to do other things, and feel whatever portion of the full range of human emotion you usually have access to. Heck, you can sleep, and it will still be there when you wake up. 

When it's time to go back to writing, do whatever you normally do to start your process. Open to document, put on your music, all that. Maybe reread the last paragraph or so of what you wrote. Then go back to your little banked up fire, and take the dirt or rocks away, exposing the coals. Throw some dry grass or twigs on there, (that's why the music and rereading) and blow gently. It'll get back up to full strength in a couple minutes, and you'll have the emotional continuity you need for the story. 

If it's gonna be more than a day or two between writing sessions, you may want to uncover your fire and add more fuel like once a day. If people look at you funny, tell them you're meditating or something. I can at this point do the whole process under two minutes, but if you don't have a lot of practice, or aren't great at the whole visualization thing, it could conceivably take as much as 20 or 30 minutes to get the fire banked and as much as five to start it up again. Plan accordingly. 

I honestly couldn't tell you why it felt so important that I write this out, but it did, so I did. Hopefully it will prove useful. Hard at work on the next Dresden Files post - you'll get at least one more out of me before the end of the month. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!