Oh, please, not literally. Also very few theorists of the mind consider Freudianism a valid theory.

In fact, it is almost sure that the only patient to whom Freudianism applied was Freud himself.

But I was hanging out in a group of writers and found that at least some of us refuse to see mental health professionals — reasons obvious — but work through things we don’t understand or traumas in our stories.

Oh, not consciously, mind you. Absolutely not consciously. Just a part of the weird alchemy that works in our brains and spits out stories.

When I found out my grandmother had died I was at the keyboard half an hour later writing a short story. Because I could not cry, or at least not yet. But I could write a story. And though she wasn’t in the story, I see things I remember from her in the story.

Sometimes I’m not even aware that I was working through some emotion too big to process in writing until years later. And it’s a piece here and a piece there.

I worry that that people will think that Orphans of the Stars is my processing my mother’s death. In fact the mother (and father. Well, sire) plot was sketched before mom died unexpectedly. Will some of the grief and shock and whatever the heck this is fall into it? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s unavoidable. But if it does, it won’t be obvious. Perhaps not even to me till years later.

At the same time, sometimes emotions and problems are too big to process and they shut the writing down.

There is nothing wrong physically, nothing wrong with my circumstances, but you just can’t write, because you’re working through some trauma that hasn’t been digested by your subconscious.

And so things abide until your brain unseizes and you can write it out, in bits and pieces and sometimes so disguised even you don’t see it. But you feel better, and perhaps more stable afterwards.

I mean, the only reason I wrote at all after 9/11 is that I had a book overdue, and I wrote it … sitting in front of the TV, listening to the news, afraid I’d miss something that happened. Something important.

And yet, you won’t see it if you read Any Man So Daring. You might, however see some trauma in it, maybe. I don’t myself, but it’s possible.

The next book I wrote was Draw One In The Dark and I’m not sure you see any of the trauma there. But then again, I’m not sure I’m yet done processing that particular trauma, much less the other traumas that fell in through the time.

And as I’m writing this I suddenly realize why I went into such a hard silence in 2020, and why it was so hard to break out of it.

But at the time, even I wasn’t aware of the shock and anger stopping my writing.

So what can I tell you that’s useful? If your grief sends you to the keyboard, write. And if it makes no sense and has nothing to do with what happened, don’t worry about it. the subconscious knows what it needs.

And if you find yourself hard stopped on all writing and there’s nothing physically wrong? Look at anything big that might have happened to stop your subconscious from doing its thing. And then give yourself some grace. soon you’ll be ready. And if you process shock, anger or grief through your pen, no one need know.