Everyday Canvas

A Writer’s Misbehaving Mind

Prompt: “A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.”
Oscar Wilde
How can a writer’s mind misbehave with positive results? What about yours?

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Fact is, I never taught my mind to misbehave. Since birth, it has been misbehaving on its own. Had my mother been alive, she’d tell you how she hated my questioning everything, especially when we had company. Oh, the joke of it! I think the entire hullabaloo started because, at times, my questions were taken as insults. Still, I never backed down. It wasn’t my fault if people were overly sensitive just about everything.

I so love my mind’s misbehaving. If writers never let their brains misbehave, would we have sci-fi, fantasy, and all those other genres? Would we ever have farce? Farce may not be a genre, but I love it. It is exaggeration to the nth degree. When a writer’s mind misbehaves and breaks all the rules and expectations, he feels a great compensating delight, for he rejoices in his ability to fly outside the bounds of the commonplace to explore and record what has never been thought of before.

Other than creativity, the misbehaving mind has another asset; it isn’t embarrassed by anything. Any weird stuff pops up inside it--through daydreaming or by conjecture--some that is considered by most as heresy. Luckily, misbehaving minds also let logic slip in, which stops any off joke or thought from sliding out; although, at one time or another, my mind might have bypassed its logic and made me blurt out its misbehavings, making rigid or solemn people question my rationality.

It is an interesting concept, this rationality. Should we let it command over our minds, and if so, how much of that command can we allow? Rationality rarely, if ever, can erase guilt, regret, bad memories, and apprehension of horrid experience in the future. Even a tune that finds its way and plays over and over inside our minds is difficult to get rid of. Such misbehavior of the mind is like a live worm in sushi. They are hard to kill. Heaven forbid if one got into our guts.

Yet, a good writer will make use of his naughty mind's obsessing over anything, even a song. In fact, he may end up relishing its incessant jumping all over the place through its obsessions. The seduction of a mind that hops from place to place while picking gems along the way can be irresistible. This, the saner people may consider craziness, but a good writer uses it to his advantage, as he takes comfort in his streaming thoughts, and when he can, he puts those on paper, calling them free-flow.

And you know what? I love free-flow. It is second nature to me, although I can’t let every free-flow piece I’ve committed on paper jump online. If I did, I’d get in big trouble.