Stream of Consciousness

            There’s a writing exercise called “Stream of Consciousness”. What you do is write down your thoughts as they come into your head. I was thinking it would make for an interesting blog post when I remembered how terrible I am at it.

            My first problem with writing a stream of consciousness is my typing speed. I can’t keep up with my brain. Being a writer, you’d think that I could write pretty fast – not so. I can only type twenty-five words per minute. Granted, that’s one handed and I can maintain that speed with either my left or right hand. Mathematically, that means I should be able to type fifty words per minute with both hands together, but no – two hands somehow drops my speed to twenty words per minute. As a frame of reference, office jobs usually require a minimum of fifty words per minute.

            The next problem for me is that I don’t actually think in words. At one point, in school, I was taught that there were two ways that people thought – either in pictures, or words. I immediately baulked at the idea because I didn't think in pictures and I knew that my thoughts needed to be translated into words before I could express them. Eventually I realised that there must be a third way of thinking (unless I was an anomaly) and, after giving it a large amount of consideration, I decided that I think in emotions. On top of that, I have several layers of thought constantly running through my head and only the one that seems most important at the time gets translated into words.

            Which brings me to my third and final problem with writing a stream of consciousness. Whenever I try to do one, my efforts to focus on what I'm thinking about inevitably focus on what I'm doing and becomes all about the exercise I'm trying to attempt. Here’s an example:

            Okay so I'm supposed to be doing a stream of consciousness thingy. I hate these things... so... what am I thinking about? Well, duh, I'm thinking about writing a stream of consciousness. As an example to the people who read my blog. Yeah I'm doing a really great job, I know, ‘cause all I can think about is what I'm supposed to be writing and, as a result, I'm writing nonsense about how I'm not writing what I should be writing because my brain refuses to switch topics.

            See what I mean? It just doesn't work for me. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting and fun exercise to try out. You should try it at some point, unless your brain is wired like mine (in which case, you have my pity) and you just keep getting caught up on what you’re doing. In that case, you should focus on writing things that don’t put your shy brain in the spotlight.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.