The First-Person Narrator That Is Me II.

Experimental Essays on Mental Elements in Creative Writing

Introduction

Mind Training or how to educate a creative mind, that always focuses on being a writer, is the subject addressed in this section.

Training the mind or constant attention to the creative work that an artist does requires mental contemplation so that the individual always remains connected to another part of themselves, namely the writer. This section also addresses the idea that even when the writer is not actively writing and is engaged in their daily life, they still need to remain a writer. A writer’s mind is always ready to absorb ideas, images, and experiences they encounter, and training their mind to be a writer makes them more aware of the world around them and helps them create something new.

Part 2: Mind training

Humans experience various behavioral cultures and upbringings throughout their lives. Their behavioral culture’s quality may differ daily due to their community and social relationships. They unconsciously see, hear, experience, or learn things. Education and culture are not limited to school and family, but this unconscious process also continues in society and jobs.

Mind Training is essential for any career, especially in artwork. Others may be unable to distinguish from an artist’s appearance, but everything is inside his mind. The main issue in the Mind training is the need to be aware of and recognize one’s expertise. Then, the language of behavior comes into that work and forms a combination.

The writer’s mind is being always trained, constantly observing, listening, and paying attention to their surroundings. Even if the writer does not write, unconsciously he is still focused on paying attention to the world.

This issue is somehow one of the main arms and front of a specialized work. This element is formed and developed throughout a person’s writing life. As time passes, the training of the writer’s mind also expands. As a result, literature, fiction, and storytelling become his/her essential element in life. Almost like human social education. It begins in childhood. Children gradually gain education and indicators of social life.

Here, I mention an example closely related to this topic.

American director Samuel Fuller has a film called White Dog, which deals with racism. In the film, a white man trains his dog to attack black people. One night, a girl hits the dog with her car and takes it home to cure. After a week, the dog returns again to his training and comes back to the girl’s house at night with a bloody and tired face. One night, she follows the dog out of curiosity and discovers the dog’s secret. She takes the white dog to a circus that has an expert trainer in training dogs and they decide to erase this mental order from the dog’s mind. Somewhere the trainer, who doesn’t have much hope for dog’s destiny, tells the girl that -once you teach a dog something, you can’t erase it from its mind!

The process of training a white dog or a human involves passing through a tunnel of learning and mental training. Here, I refer to this process as the ‚Queen’s Tunnel.‘

The property of this tunnel is that it sticks every behavior in the memory and eventually becomes a part of its engineered instincts. Like that white dog that attacked every black person. Engineered, or I should say trained instinct, does what you’ve done through the Queen’s Tunnel. The queen’s tunnel here is the process of mental training that makes something a part of human instincts and upgrades it.

On the other hand, human inner life is fluid. The mind is like a molten substance, but it has a purpose and intention, and everything is formed in our unconscious, and then we use it in our conscious. A writer is constantly being trained in the area of writing and creativity to be more of a writer, to be more careful, and finally to be more observant. In the area of creative writing, Mind Training and giving importance to it can vaccinate the writer against bigotry.

The human brain is always pregnant with memories, and although it is physically inside a container called the skull, it is endless and free. When the writer’s creative mind settles in the writing area, it starts to be trained by its mechanism. Just like a gun being armed and a bullet ready to fire.

Here, the author’s mind is always armed and ready to observe the world, and he describes the world through his own creative eyes. As I said in the Observation Room, the author keeps things in his/her mind. The main factor behind the outlining of the Observation Room is the Mind Training. An author should be aware that there are things around him at all times to keep in the observation room. This is important that the writer should be a writer even when he is not writing and keep his mind ready to receive different data.

This means that he lets his mind to always be careful of the surroundings, people, and events because there, maybe an idea hidden in them.

I go back to the example I gave about dogs. They bark out of instinct, but when they are trained and passed through the queen’s tunnel, the situation takes a different form. They don’t attack anyone in the street when they are walking with their owner, or like that movie, according to the Mind Training that the man did, his dog will attack any black person!

My personal experience with Mind Training has a history that goes back to my teenage years. When I was a teenager, I wrote things that were incomplete and bad stories. My uncle was a theater actor and knew how to write plays. I used to give him what I wrote to read. He was the first person in my life who used to read my stories. The tips he told me after reading my writings were the first tips that led me to creativity in writing.

Once he took me to a theater salon. He and the other actors were practicing for a play. They were doing strange things on stage and making strange sounds. He and his friends were laughing strangely or crying or shouting the words in weird expressions. After they finished, I asked him about these weird actions. He told me that if we actors don’t train ourselves well, the audience will get bored. We were practicing our roles and training our minds to be someone else on stage.

I am not your uncle on the stage, I am someone else. It was hard for someone of my age to understand these sentences, but his words stayed in my mind. He told me that life is like a movie and our words and actions are our whole role.

If you want to be a writer, you must be both an actor and a cameraman.

In other words, keep your camera always on! You must see well and be able to describe sufficiently. So don’t explain! If you describe well, you can also write well so that others can see and feel something from your writing. As a result, the author deals with a chain of elements. It means the room for observing and Mind Training and ideas. The attention and accuracy of the author always start before writing the story.

Here, all my focus is to explain how important time and life are before writing.

Artists and writers are starters! The starters of new worlds with new realities. As a result, every book that is read starts something new for the reader. When the writer trains his mind, actually he/she trains his/her inner world. The Mind Training gradually becomes a part of the writer’s instinct and unconsciousness. In my opinion, the writer can create a kind of instinct for himself that is related to his work expertise.

On the other hand, it plays a key role in the field of talent development. Because our genius resides in our unconscious, Mind Training will improve our genius. Here, I quote from director David Lynch. He wrote in his book Catching the Big Fish:

„Everything, anything that is a thing, comes up from the deepest level. Modern physics calls that level the Unified Field. The more your consciousness — your awareness — is expanded, the deeper you go toward this source, and the bigger fish you can catch.“

I believe that the Mind Training is a kind of way to approach the unified field. There, an author can be aware and monitor the various fishes! It has happened to me that I don’t write anything for six months or a year. But I tried to keep the sensors of my mind on due to diving into a deeper point in my mind.

The training that has passed through the Queen’s Tunnel and has stuck a part of the writer’s mind cannot be removed because it is a self-made instinct. I’m not going to erase what I’ve learned and observed from my mind, and that to me is a quality form of creative writing.

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This article is the first part of an abridged excerpt from the unpublished book „The First-Person Narrator That Is Me,“ originally written in Persian and translated into English for publishing an fjuzn.sk.