Sue Grafton Discusses her “Shadow” (secret sharer, subconscious, imaginary companion, alternate personality) in Three other Interviews

In my last post about an interview for her book Kinsey and Me (2013), Sue Grafton mentioned “Shadow” as being one of her “several personalities.” Looking through a few of Grafton’s past interviews, I find it may be new that she is framing the issue in terms of multiple personality, but she has been mentioning Shadow for more than fifteen years.

She says that she got the term “shadow” from a Jungian therapist whom she had seen for writer’s block. The Jungian therapist said that she should listen to her unconscious, her “shadow,” for creative insight. Since then, Grafton says that she loves writer’s block, because it’s a message from her unconscious, her shadow, about what to do with the story she is writing.

However, what she now refers to as her Shadow—a nice, publicly acceptable term, since, according to Jungians, everybody has one—actually originated in her childhood as a sort of imaginary companion. “I guess that’s where Shadow comes from. I’ve been having a constant conversation with my dark side for most of my life.”

So Shadow is a personified psychological entity whom Grafton has been having conversations with since childhood. It seems to be a friendly, constructive relationship, but Shadow can be quite critical and arrogant, evidently due to superior knowledge. Grafton quotes Shadow as once saying to her, “Oh sweetie, you don’t have the foggiest idea what this book is about.”

A key feature of Grafton’s writing process is that she keeps a long and detailed journal of her thoughts about the book she is writing. One purpose of the journal is that it serves as a medium of communication between Grafton and Shadow. “I leave her notes in my journal, you know. ‘Dear, dear Shadow, please help me. Your friend, Sue.’” Sometimes the questions and answers are quite specific to the characters and plot of the book she is writing.

Grafton says, “I try not to create so much as I discover. One of my theories about these books is that they already exist.” She attributes this attitude to her religious background and the Presbyterian belief in predestination. But the idea that her books already exist and that she just has to discover them would also seem to be implied by the way her books seem to be already known to, and provided by, Shadow.