The Dark Me

At some point in my writing history, I started to 'separate'. The human me is the person married to my wife and who fathered my children. The other me, is called Ancient Heart, or Ancient for short.

Referring to an unconscious thought in third person will sound strange to many. I have been writing stories for over 15 years and it never occurred to me that other writers had 'muses' and treated them the same as I treat mine.

I have shared it with my wife. She understands the mental processes of having an 'inner voice' which utilises me as an instrument. I could not write without Ancient. I don't know where he gets his ideas, and I don't know how he comes up with his horrors. I have no ideas. When I write, he consistently has 'eureka' moments. You may have heard that one should not wait until one is inspired to write, well, that's true. The inspiration happens automatically!

Write what you know?

I am a hobby writer  and understand that Ancient wrote most of my novels. I would never think about how to kill somebody by drowning them in hot fat (see "Tastes Like Chicken"), but I write it. You don't have to write about what you know. Writing is also about imagining what you don't know. If you need to know something, look it up. It's called research. If I wrote about what I knew, I wouldn't be writing fiction.

Ancient is strong kung-fu. It is common for me to get on a train and write for an hour and not remember much of it. The story which comes from my pen is raw but is a cohesive story. Reading it back is enlightening. It needs work, and that's where I the first person come in. We have synergy.

He is annoying when he changes the story half-way  and I have to edit the damn thing. I don't use a plan - I use Ancient, but he isn't without problems.

So, I write about what I don't know and fill in the blanks afterwards.

Is it about horror?

Ancient is adaptable. He has a strong preference towards horror. I use the picture above in forums when using the name Ancient. It denotes horror, but Ancient doesn't have a face.

He has also wrote romance, science fiction and short stories regardless of genre. For example, "Chronicles" is an ongoing trilogy facing environmental disaster in the future (it's not your run-of-the-mill environmental tragedy - it's something very different).

When does he appear?

My muse appears only when I write. He doesn't want to play at any other time. I usually write for two hours on a train. The first five minutes is an 'invocation' period. This is where I set myself a zone and read the latter part of what I wrote previously (assuming I remember it). I put pen to paper, and wait while he flexes his creaky fingers to begin work. After five minutes, I mostly write until I reach my destination. I use pen and paper to write and have a permanent indentation on the inside of my right middle finger. This starts hurting after half an hour or so. Sometimes it gets very painful and despite Ancient's protests, I just have to stop.

Tell me more about Ancient

He's weird like me.