What's the subconscious?
Oooh -- you're in for a treat. You get to read Carl Jung's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. It's by a man who is going to die soon and is speaking the truth as he sees it, which is all any of us can do. By the end of the book you should have some idea of the subconscious and the unconscious.
But those are stuffy long Latin words. In plain English, I might say that how I think up names -- indeed, how I write books -- is: I look and listen, inwardly. Then I take notes, using words or drawings, on what I find there.
This isn't woo-woo or Satanic or wacko, or anything glamorous you can think of. It's what artists have done since we were painting on cave walls and telling tall stories in grunts. It's like mining inner minerals that we were born with, and that grow with us as we grow.
You have those minerals, too. They're already there, in your subconscious. Even if you grew up in blandest suburbia they're there, waiting for you to mine them. If you need a strategy to get started digging, you might read about freewriting in Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones.
Be aware, though, of something that we're not often told: You don't get to blast out the inner gold, grab it and be an instant artistic billionaire. In fact, the stuff you'll find as you inwardly mine is often less like gold than nitroglycerine, or the furnace-surface of the sun: potent, dangerous, terrible. And incandescent, radiant, wholly alive.
The catch is: You only get to use as much of this, your native potency, as you can manage.
By managing I mean, "Learning how to allow your medium -- words or drawings -- to carry that deep force without buckling, getting vague or trite, or going on overwhelm."
You could say you're learning to dive deep without drowning. Carry five blue-plate specials balanced up and down your arm. Stick with your friend who's dying of cancer and not run away. Hike those twelve desert miles and then find your way home.
Managing your native potency comes from familiarity with your medium, be it language, paint, music, whatever. It is acquired through practice, attentiveness, and staying in conversation -- that is, community -- with other artists.
As far as I know, there are no short cuts. Time and doggedness and the enjoyment of each day -- which is the only day -- will make you good at what you do.
Then sometime, after your blood and tears and time and mystery and death and rebirth and silliness and delight, I'll get to read the book you wrote. I'll get to look at what you drew. Your voice and vision will shine there, and I'll say, "Thanks. Dear living, honest being, thanks for your book. It's wonderful!"
