My own writing identity, or my writerly self, has developed over a long time, though it is only now that I have begun to find an explicit language for what I do. My writerly self is very much linked to my unconscious; I use my unconscious for developing my initial ideas and for depositing the raw data of my research. I am not a writer who uses autoethnography, as I find that I need to keep a distinction between my writing life and my lived life. I have developed very strong voices for both, and it is important for my sense of self to keep these apart. As T.S. Eliot says “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.” (Eliot, 1932, p. 10) So while my lived experience naturally influences my writing, I choose not to use it explicitly. Colbert mentions the use of ‘flow’ to describe the complete absorption one feels when in the process of writing, this is something to which I can relate. However, unlike Colbert I do not write stream of consciousness style writing, but am a planner and organiser who will spend months before even starting to write researching my subject in great detail. I write with music playing to help, like a meditation prompt, to help me enter a flow state. Some of my greatest influences in writing have been Virginia Woolf, who showed that the small and intricate can be stuff of novels as much as the large and grand. Jeanette Winterson, whom I loathed on first reading, but whom I have come to adore as my narrow view of what is a novel and what constitutes a narrative have developed from the naive 1st year student in my undergraduate degree. As I have developed as a writer, I have found theories which have proved enlightening for my writing practice, feminism as I examine what it means to be a woman in the world. Metafiction, as my ambitions have begun to outstrip conventional three act linear narrative, I find I need a theory which can contain the types of stories I wish now to tell. I am also very interested in Jungian theories of the unconscious and how this may inform the stories I am now writing, through the use of symbols and archetypes.
References
Brown T, 2008, Desire and Drive in Researcher Subjectivity: The Broken Mirror of Lacan Qualitative Inquiry 2008; 14; 402 https://ilearn.swin.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-3406278-dt-content-rid-5041245_4/institution/lilydale_postgraduate_writing/LPW705A/modules/8/documents/BrownTDesiresndDriveinResearcherSubjectivity.pdf
Davies, B, 2000 “A” Body of Writing: 1990 – 1999, Google books, http://books.google.com.au/books?id=1QNSyUvv-94C&dq=bronwyn+davies&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=9wpbDPtLwQ&sig=ecZmWCFi1i-PY5yyLVvrEg04neQ&hl=en&ei=gaAPSojPBNaGkQXIq7i6BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#PPA23,M1
Eliot, T.S. (1932), Selected essays 1917 - 1932 (1st ed.).Harcourt, New York.