The Guys in the Basement - Writing against the inner Control Freak

To tell the truth, I already got my acceptance letter from T.FN a couple of weeks ago. However, I thought the surprise would be nicer if I could not only confirm Lost Saint has finally been accepted into the archive, but also provide a link to the story *g*

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, I hereby present the TF.N version of Lost Saint.

This short vignette about Obi-Wan in the desert is easily the most controlled, most polished piece of fiction I have ever written. I can't really explain why, but as an author I usually have a rather strong tendency towards planning. And more often than not, the struggle to get my ideas on paper *exactly* as I imagined them ends in frustration, the soft noise of a pushed delete button or another abandoned opening paragraph slumbering in a near fatal coma in the darkest corner of my hard drive.

In interviews with professional as well as amateur writers the creative act often gets explained along the terms of "opening the doors to the unconscious". If I remember correctly, Stephen King once described it as "sitting down in front of the word processor and letting the guys in the basement do their job.

Even though I have begun to suspect that this particular approach might actually (at least to a certain degree) work a lot better than mine, I'm still a bit hesitant to open the door to the basement to ask the guys down there if they could kindly assist me.

However, I did an awful lot of experimenting over the last couple of months, mostly fragments and opening scenes, trying to establish a balance between what is spontaneous and what is controlled. Here is a short example of what happens when I set off without knowing where the journey will take me.

( A girl, a guy and a box of chocolate, German )

( A girl, a guy and a box of chocolate, English, translation provided by a friend who didn't want to be named *g* )