Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Every man is a channel through which heaven floweth. - Ralph Waldo Emerson


Read an article in the September issue of the Smithsonian called Ghost Writer by Gioia Diliberto and I've figured out where I'm going wrong with my writing - I should be channeling spirits!!! LOL!

The article is about a woman, Pearl Curran, who channeled at 17th century spirit (Patience Worth) using an Ouija board and dictated her poems and stories - nearly 4 million words between 1913 and 1937. That's not all - her first novel was hailed by the NY Times as a "feat of literary composition" and went on to publish 7 novels, poems, short stories, and plays.

gosh - a dead spirit can get published and I'm still waiting - patiently (ha, ha get it Patience Worth - ha, ha - okay lame I know)

Anyway, no one was able to prove her false though various theories abounded - like "the automatic activities of the unconscious" or "result of inherited 'nerves cells' or the more popular mulitple personalities. And of course spirtualism was enjoying a resurgence during this time making her popular.

There are times - the very rare times - that I do, as the article points out 'live as fully in their writing as in their own lives.' - where characters , plots, scenes, dialogue become as 'real to me as personal experience'

But to channel a dead spirit? Creepy - and besides the Bible says" 'Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the LORD your God.
--Leviticus 19:31

So channeling dead spirits is out. But how about channeling an alien from Planet X? Oh yeah I'm all over THAT.

3 comments:

  1. I'll take the ghosts and you get the aliens. Ghosts getting published oh my. But there was rumors of ghosts at teh sorority house - maybe I'll try to channel it ...

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  2. I dunno. My characters are always speaking to me. Sometimes at me. Or around me. Possibly through me.

    Often, even, on my blog!

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  3. Read about this, too. Interesting. I once tried waht they call automatic writing but nothing happened.

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