The Writer’s Brain

This is keyboard warriors - you writers and aspiring wordsmiths. We're about to dive into the labyrinth that is the writer's mind, and visit three distinct subpersonalities sharing your cranial real estate: Creator, Editor, Architect.

First up, we have the Creator, the part of your writer’s brain that flings literary spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. It’s job is to generate stuff, hopefully good stuff, and minimally important and inspiring stuff. It's Shakespeare drinking Redbull and it doesn't care about spelling, grammar, or whether your protagonist's name changed from Bob to Bill halfway through chapter three. The Creator is raw and unbridled, doesn’t care about conventions, and is energized by potential. It prefers volume and novelty over beauty.

Next, we meet the Editor. It’s purpose is to take the Creator's raw, chaotic mess and turn it into something that won't make English teachers weep. Picture an eagle-eyed, matronly librarian stooped over your work with a red pen and a vendetta against overblown and hyperbolic adjectives and adverbs. It tries to excise Adjectavitis, scrutinizes every comma, and passionately hunt down passive voice and second person references. Oh, and it takes pride in eliminating your darlings with the precision of a literary sniper.

Last but not least, there's the Architect. This is the part of your brain that actually remembers you're supposed to be writing a coherent story, not just stringing together a series of witty one-liners, profound insights, and obscure pop culture references. The Architect is the responsible adult of the trio, making sure your plot doesn't resemble a drunken game of Twister and that your main thesis doesn't flatline halfway through the book.

Now, here's the most important takeaway: these three aspects of your writerly psyche need to be kept apart like feuding siblings fighting over their stuff in a shared bedroom. If you let them all loose at once, you'll end up with the literary equivalent of a three-way cage match, and trust me, nothing good comes of that. In fact, the common term is “writer’s block!”        

In Creator mode, you need to sequester the Editor and Architect in a sealed glass booth – they can watch but not be heard. Let your words flow like glowing lava from Mt. Haleakala – unconcerned about impact or intensity. Don't worry if your metaphors are more mixed than a bag of mixed nuts – that's the other you's problem.

When it's time to edit, sit the Creator in the glass booth, and wake the Editor from their nap. Let them go to town on your manuscript like an archeologist sweeping 3000-year-old dirt to reveal an ancient treasure. Just remember to keep the booth locked and keep the Creator away during this process, or you might find yourself in an endless loop of write, edit, sob, repeat.

Finally, when it’s time to make sure your piece actually makes sense (a fabulous service to your readers, right?), it's the Architect's time to shine. They'll swoop in like the Army Corps of Engineers, connecting plot threads, reinforcing key principles, and making sure that the flow and structure are compelling and solid rather than as wobbly as a Jenga tower in an earthquake.

So what’s it like when these three aspects all dance in your frontal lobe all at once? Picture this: You're typing away, feeling like a literary genius, when suddenly the Editor screeches to a halt because you used "their" instead of "there." Just as you're fixing that, the Architect panics because this paragraph doesn’t fit in this flow, and it’s very likely the whole chapter needs to move to the back. Meanwhile, the Creator is throwing new metaphors to explain an idea, and adding new concepts just for fun.

Net net? Writer’s block. You stare at your annoying screen, paralyzed, as your word count stays firmly fixed and your deadline hurtles toward you like a runaway train on greased tracks. Your magnum opus remains a jumble of possibility, and your inner critic waves it’s hands as it vigorously confirms your suspicion that you’re no writer at all.

So, my fellow writers, remember: keep your inner Creator, Editor, and Architect separated. Let them take turns at the wheel of your literary drive. Because if you don't, you'll end up with an article or book that reads like it was written by a committee of deaf and blind squirrels jacked up on espresso – entertaining, perhaps, but not what you had in mind when you set out to express your truth and offer your gifts to the world.