In reading and editing some of my own work, I’m sometimes surprised by little hidden meanings or connections that I swear I wasn’t consciously aware of writing into the story.
I wondered about this, hoping obviously that it’s some sort of genius at work, but there’s a simpler answer. As a story is revealed to us as we write, what we would do, or would want to do, is invariably in the back of our mind. While we’re writing, we’re constantly making connections, pulling out information filed in our minds that we’re not required to stop and search for, it just comes naturally to the surface with no effort needed.
If I’m writing about a beach, all the beaches I’ve seen since I was a kid are there to draw upon as to senses, how they felt, smelled, the salt water taste, the noise or quiet, the touch of wet sand, dry hot sand, the horseshoe crabs, all of it. These things will all show up in my description.
The nuances, the subtleties that I may not be aware of will come out as well. Probably as hidden within the words as from memory, they sneak out when we give them the opportunity of a story to be told.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
That’s a much better explanation than the one I usually use–about the gnomes who live inside my computer who “make magic happen”.
(Hi! Stumbled in here from Technorati.)