{"id":242,"date":"2012-06-23T22:59:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-23T22:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/2012\/06\/23\/sas-the-perils-of-being-an-author-with-synesthesia-by-morgan-bauman\/"},"modified":"2012-06-23T22:59:00","modified_gmt":"2012-06-23T22:59:00","slug":"sas-the-perils-of-being-an-author-with-synesthesia-by-morgan-bauman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/2012\/06\/23\/sas-the-perils-of-being-an-author-with-synesthesia-by-morgan-bauman\/","title":{"rendered":"SAS: The Perils of Being an Author With Synesthesia, by Morgan Bauman"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

 “Share A Saturday” is a weekly chance for you, yes YOU, to come on my blog and talk about whatever you want, so long as it’s related to writing\/books. For more information, such as if you’d like to “share a Saturday” with me, please see below!<\/i>

<\/i>
Morgan Bauman is a YA fantasy author currently in the process of publishing her series “UNTOLD MEMORIES”. You can check out her blog here<\/a>! <\/i><\/p>\n

The letter A is a brilliant, apple red. The number 4 is a green so vivid and fresh that grass dreams of it during long hot summers–summers that scorch grass the dry, brittle yellow of the song Hotel California<\/i>. E is green, too; a frostier green, colder and deeper. My main character\u2019s personality is a dulled, reddish brown that matches the R that begins her name.<\/p>\n

Synesthesia<\/a> is a relatively rare condition in which the sensory wires in the brain overlap and intermingle; one sense involuntarily sets off another sensation (in addition to the sensation it would have triggered on its own in a neurotypical brain). For some people, letters may have personalities; scents may evoke specific textures pressed against one\u2019s hands; tastes may have shapes; the days of the week may each have a poignant flavor. This isn\u2019t something imagined by the synesthete; if tested, the sensations will remain constant over years and decades.<\/p>\n

For me, every musical note, letter, number, concept, voice, and character has a color. The color of a word on the page doesn\u2019t always match the color of the word in the air. Just like the tightly packed dots of color in an old-time comic book, the words\u2019 colors change as I string them into sentences and paragraphs, bleeding into each other, warping and fading. Commonly used words tend to fade, color-wise; as a child, I thought this was what people referred to when they said, \u201cThat\u2019s my name; don\u2019t wear it out.\u201d If I pack too many vibrant words together, paragraphs begin to clash and look disjointed. My stories have to look good on paper as well as aloud, so I read them to myself as I go. <\/p>\n

So far, it probably sounds like a boon, and it is; I wouldn\u2019t trade my synesthesia for a million dollar book deal. But the title of this piece mentions peril<\/i>. What perils could there be?<\/p>\n

If I\u2019m listening to a song with dark brown guitar and yellow-brown vocals–while writing about a character with a green personality interacting with one with a dull red personality–but this particular chapter calls for muted blue in the description, I sometimes stop ten or thirty times and just hold my head in my hands while trying to sort through everything. I get distracted. The words get jammed in my fingers, the tip of my tongue, impossible to dislodge.<\/p>\n

Color flow–whether in a mix CD or a chapter–is extremely important to me. I intentionally use jarringly different colors in language for a specific effect; I name characters and their personality blossoms out of the colors of their name (or they get renamed). <\/p>\n

Which leads me to the final peril of being an author with synesthesia: sometimes, you write something literal only to have it be taken as metaphor; other times, you realize that your hidden description–the colors coursing underneath the text–are invisible to all of your readers. The hidden, watery themes; the dry touch of the desert in your villains; the bursts of vivid color on the barren landscape of the page–invisible.<\/p>\n

Even so, I like to include them. After all, what\u2019s better than secrets hidden in plain sight?<\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

If you’d like to participate in a Share a Saturday, feel free to contact me at my email, hildred @ gmail.com (no spaces) or through any of the other ways to get a hold of me through my Contact page.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 “Share A Saturday” is a weekly chance for you, yes YOU, to come on my blog and talk about whatever you want, so long as it’s related to writing\/books. For more information, such as if you’d like to “share a Saturday” with me, please see below!Morgan Bauman is a YA fantasy author currently in the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[252,150,203,44,207,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colors","category-guest-post","category-morgan-bauman","category-real-life","category-share-a-saturday","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paRtqI-3U","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hildred-billings.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}