The Shinning, and other Musings

So, I'm watching The Shining, which of course deals with a writer who goes batshit insane with cabin fever.  I had forgotten how creepy the movie is.  It also sends flashbacks to when I was 10 years old, and I was up at our cabin in McCall, Idaho in the winter.  For some reason everyone thought it would be okay for a 10 year old to not only watch the movie, but watch it in the middle of winter.  The icing on the cake was having to walk home, in the dark, across the snowy road to get back to my cabin.  When I asked someone to walk me back to my cabin, I'm pretty sure the response was, "you're fine."

And that got me thinking.  For the most part, writers write what they know.  If I was to write about my father's troubles with alcohol, and my experiences dealing with it, that would ring home because it was something I experienced. 

If I wrote about my experiences at being so horrified at the idea of walking across the road late at night, the story would be true to my own life.

Where am I going with this inane rambling?  Just a bit.

So we write of our experiences.  We write what we know.  So what happens when we have an idea that occurs our own experiences?

We escape into that world, and that world, for a short time, becomes our reality.  It becomes our experiences.  When I write about Vincent going to other realities, my experiences become altered by the world in which I place the characters.

The fact that the human mind is capable of such things is pretty astounding.  It is this escapism, this idea of experiencing new things that drives me to write.

I can't wait to finish my degree so I can focus more on what I want to do.  The desire has never left; only the time to feed my desire to escape and experience new things has dwindled. 

So.. there you go.  Now, to finish watching the Shining...I mean, the Shinning.

Gus