Conception

As noted in yesterday's post, conception and perception share opposite sides of the same coin. While perception is closely tied to (but not entirely dependent on) sensory processing, the interpretation of input from eye, ear, nose, taste and olfactory sensors, conception is related to the minds ability to form ideas or to devise schemes or designs separate from such immediate input. In simpler terms, conception or creative thought is not dependent on cues from our immediate environment. The process of creation.

Writing, if nothing else, regardless of the genre, is in one way or the other creative. Certainly science fiction writing is truly creative since the whole thrust of a good sci-fi story is to escape the mundane and usual. Of course, such a story cannot entirely escape sensory input since our moment-to-moment life is intimately connected to our senses and thus to our memories and conclusions about ourselves in life. Still, I love writing in the speculative realm for whatever degree of freedom I can obtain from conclusions which, formed over time, are so often erroneous or incomplete. The infamous baggage we all carry around. Or, put another way, I love writing science fiction because it gives me the opportunity to escape myths of reality. Having been at this form of writing for over ten years now, I can say without hesitation that the effort to escape those myths through writing has permanently affected my view of the moment-to-moment world.

How hard it is to examine and update long-held beliefs, views, and conclusions; to come to see that so much of life is no more than a web of often flimsy rationalizations woven to support whatever position in life we have sought or come to reside in. It is a delightful irony that the process of examining myths posing as reality should have been stimulated by characters created, conceived, in the mind/imagination. A very interesting feedback loop.

An interesting spin-off of this feedback loop is the effect other acts of creation have on our being and understanding. For instance, the conception of a child. What effect, if any, does the substrate of conception, the physical and emotional background in the parents minds surrounding the physical act(s) of conception possibly have on the child so conceived? I don't know, nor does anyone (regardless of what is said), but I suspect there is input in one form or the other. And there is input regardless of the profession or undertaking.

It is absolutely true that, over time, we become what we do. One little step at a time. Our percepts and concepts mutually evolve as the demands or our work, and the concessions we make to advance, daily transform us. And somewhere along the way, in the absence of cognition, we pass a point of no return where self-appraisal becomes nothing more than self-serving tripe designed to maintain the status quo.

Just think of it! Day-by-day we create what we will become. I love it! Choice, decisions, concessions, compromise, rebellion, surrender, anger, aggression--all, and more, come into play forging personality and destiny. Especially choice. Writing, any difficult, demanding, creative act is wonderful, for it gives no rest and does not accept what we know as final.