Character Displacement Disorder**

I've been so enmeshed in the novel that I'm writing that last Friday, every time I came up from my office, I had to keep asking what day it was, I thought it was Monday. And why I fully expected it to be raining (because it was in my book).

I've never done a poll for it, but someone probably should, and ask the question--

Have you ever been so immersed in what you were writing you lost all track of place and time?

I find this phenomenon truly bizarre and exciting at the same time. I mean, the human brain is a complex machine of infinite possibility, and to take what we think is right, Friday and sunny, and make us believe it's Monday and raining. Well, shakes the soul a little bit.

I suppose it's the trick to how hypnotists ply their craft. Trick the brain into thinking one thing when it's really another. I know because I was hypnotized once in a comedy act in Vegas. It was a funny skit--the hypnotist wanted me to think I was drunk, my shoe was a phone, I had to get ready for a date, but the shoe phone kept ringing. I remember everything I did on stage, but don't have an accounting for WHY I did it.

The power of persuasion. That is what all great writing really is. The power to persuade another human they have escaped their current time and space and have been transported to another.

However, that is the reader's experience. What I'm talking about specifically here is the writer's experience.

If we, as writers, are sitting in the BICHOK position, writing, and are fully conscious of the fact that this indeed is what we are doing (in Provo UT, Denver CO, Bethania NC at 6, 9, 11 am on any given day) then how can we be somewhere else at the same time that doesn't even exist except in our minds?

Dr. Who Anyone?

In my previous post, I talked about Fate, Karma, Kismet, and Serendipity (and a bunch of other nonlinear things). I guess I forgot to add time travel. And virtual reality. Because isn't that what we do as writers? We live and breathe in an existence that does not belong to us, per se, but our characters, but we are the creators of those characters and does not each of those characters have a bit of us in them, therefore we are the characters who are living in that virtual reality.

I think that's a bit too deep for me, even though I wrote it. But does it make sense?

How did I get sick?

Two weeks ago, I wrote a scene where my main character begins to come down with a sinus infection. As I was writing, my throat began to itch. My eyes started to water, I developed a headache, and then sneezed so many times, my daughter called down to my office, "Are you all right?"

I felt fine as soon as I stepped away from the computer screen. As soon as my concentration was broken. However, the second I got back into the scene, I started to feel lousy again.

Had I hypnotized myself? I didn't think you could do that.

Character Displacement Disorder**

to lose all cognizance of reality and become immersed in the virtual reality of the world you are creating; to feel the emotional and physical effects of the make-believe character

**This is not a true medical disorder. I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on television.

I wonder if gamers experience this phenomenon as well. I would presume they do. They have all the right tools, headphones, goggles, they're surrounded by their world.

If I am just sitting in front of a computer screen, then how can I lose myself if all I have to do is look up to break the trance? And if I don't look up, does that mean I don't want to break the trance? Does that subconsciously mean because I don't look up that I would rather stay in that world, the one I have created, than in the real one?

Or does it mean, that I am an awesome writer who has so engaged her audience (ME!) that getting to the next page is more important than a little snotty nose?

(I have just sneezed six times in a row. Is just thinking about being sick made me sick? Have I just incurred a residual hypnosis? Can you even do that? *sneeze*)


The mind is an awesome creation. Somedays I just wish it came with a set of directions.


Robynne Rand (c) 2017