TRUTH – STRANGER THAN FICTION

Where do my ideas come from? The word idea is a noun – a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action. We all know this but I’ve been thinking a little more deeply about how an idea can come to you out of nowhere, when you write a story. But does it actually come from nowhere?

In my latest children’s book, ‘Danika and Yatimah in a Race for Rain’ I have a family forced onto the stock routes, eventually basing themselves at Quilpie for several weeks. In the story there’s a big derelict house call BIG HOUSE, which is surrounded by a high wall. I loved the spooky idea of a wall but a little voice niggled saying, seriously, a high wall around a house in an outback town? So I simply decided, okay artistic license!

Imagine my surprise when my local historian friend Gail Lipke came for a visit to purchase a copy of Race for Rain and enlightened me on a few facts. I now realise that the cliché  ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ is actually true. As I said to her, I’ve read books where houses have walls around them but in Quilpie? This is a town with approximately 650 people and is around 954 kilometres from Brisbane.

Photograph Quilpie Qld – www.qldforeveryone.com.au

Summers are hot in Quilpie but maybe it’s worth sweating under the hot sun to strike it rich in the opal fields because Quilpie is known for a magnificent boulder opal gem.  You can actually fossick for these amazing gemstones at the Free Opal Fossicking Area, two kilometres from town.

A section of Arnos Wall at Winton in Queensland – Photograph courtesy of Jeff Close www.outbackbooks.info

Sorry I’ve gone off track here extolling the virtues of Quilpie …
I told Gail more details about BIG HOUSE and she had a little giggle and told me about Arno’s wall in Winton. Imagine that – a house with a wall around it in Winton! I was over the moon.

Photograph town of Winton Qld –   www.lifeinqueensland.com

Mind you Winton  is 691.3 km north of Quilpie but it’s equally hot and dry. That’s when I began to wonder if I’d possibly seen a program about Arno’s wall? I’m sure I have but the wall around BIG HOUSE is nothing like Arno’s wall, which is simply astonishing.

Here’s a link to Arnos Wall You Tube  www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPyE9BrqKD 

I then wondered if the idea came from unconsciously knowing about Arno’s wall but not really consciously remembering it.

A section of Arnos Wall at Winton in Queensland – Photograph courtesy of Jeff Close www.outbackbooks.info

The idea sparked my curiosity so I decided to look up what our unconscious minds remember. Once I began to read about the human mind I realised it was quite possible for me to have Arno’s wall buried in my unconscious mind to come forward and be part of my story. How fabulous, and now when I think about it I’ve probably used my unconscious mind even more than I realised.

For the whole time I bred horses I imagined the outcome of each mating, I felt the excitement of a new foal and the habit of connecting pedigrees and photographs of Arabian horses as well as remembering a never ending supply of facts associated with the Arabian breed. It’s limitless … Horses or events, happy and sad, circumstances even history I thought I’d forgotten pop straight in my head with an image I remembered. Has this happened to you? I’d love to hear about it of it has.

A section of Arnos Wall at Winton in Queensland – Photograph courtesy of Jeff Close www.outbackbooks.info

I now experience this all the time with my writing. At least now, I know my ideas don’t come from ‘out of the blue’. But, you know, I actually feel as if my writing muse is a little more than my unconscious mind.

I’ve included a small example of mindset-habits.com ‘s article, A Walk Through the Human Mind by Jeff Thomas, it’s an interesting article. Click the link to read the entire article.

A Walk Through the Human Mind by Jeff Thomas
http://www.mindset-habits.com/

The concept of three levels of mind is nothing new. Sigmund Freud, the famous Austrian psychologist was probably the first to popularize it into mainstream society as we know it today. Even though his theories have subsequently been widely disputed in Psychology circles because they are very hard to scientifically prove, Freud nonetheless created a useful model of the mind, which he separated into 3 tiers or sections – the conscious mind or ego, the preconscious, and the unconscious mind.
The best way I have found to illustrate the concept of the three minds is by using a triangle. If you imagine at the very tip of the triangle is your conscious mind. It occupies only a small portion of space at the top, a bit like an iceberg where only a fraction of it is showing above the water. It probably represents about 10% of your brain capacity.
Below this is a slightly larger section that Freud called the preconscious, or what some refer to as the subconscious. It is much larger than the conscious mind and accounts for around 50-60% of your brain capabilities.
The section below this is the unconscious mind. It occupies the whole width of the base of the triangle and fills out the other 30-40% of the triangle. It is vast and deep and largely inaccessible to conscious thought, a bit like the dark depths of the ocean.

How They Work Together
Your conscious mind is what most people associate with who you are a bit like the captain of a ship standing on the bridge giving out orders. In reality it’s the crew in the engine room below deck (the subconscious and the deeper unconscious) that carry out the orders. The conscious mind communicates to the outside world and the inner self through speech, pictures, writing, physical movement, and thought.
The subconscious mind, on the other hand, is in charge of our recent memories, and is in continuous contact with the resources of the unconscious mind.
The unconscious mind is the storehouse of all memories and past experiences, both those that have been repressed through trauma and those that have simply been consciously forgotten and no longer important to us. It’s from these memories and experiences that our beliefs, habits, and behaviors are formed.
The unconscious constantly communicates with the conscious mind via our subconscious, and is what provides us with the meaning to all our interactions with the world, as filtered through your beliefs and habits. It communicates through feelings, emotions, imagination, sensations, and dreams.

About Jeff Thomas:- Mindset-Habits.com is a blog written by me, Jeff Thomas, and is a collection of articles (and over time, videos and audio as well) about the insights, discoveries, and breakthrough’s science and psychology has made regarding life and personal change.
Read the entire article at http://www.mindset-habits.com/conscious-subconscious-unconscious-mind/