Note # 20 – The People in My Head

Funny thing about writing – if you don’t actually sit down and commit words to the page, nothing gets written.  I sometimes wish that this wasn’t the case – I wish I could just beam my clever thoughts and witty observations from my mind to my word processor (or perhaps directly to Amazon) and have them appear there as fully formed dialogue and descriptions, but alas, this is not how it works.  In order for sentences and paragraphs and chapters to get written, I have to actually sit down, usually at my laptop, and peer off into space and listen to the people in my head talk, and try to figure out what they’re feeling and why they’re doing what they’re doing.

Sometimes this goes very smoothly and I am able to bash out 750 words in a sitting and later when I come back I see that maybe 726 of those words were pretty good and I can probably fix the other 24 with a joke or a sarcastic adverb or a bit of editing.  Sometimes the people in my head speak in clear, distinct voices and they let me know their inner most desires – they stride around making decisions and giving speeches and I scurry after them (in my mind) with a notepad, jotting down their every utterance.

But other times, it’s very quiet in my head, but not that good, peaceful quiet like you get when you’re watching a sunset.  No, this is the quiet of having lost your way, of having moved too far away from the characters and the action and not being able to hear what’s going on.  This kind of quiet can stop you in your tracks.  But the longer I write, the more I’ve come to recognize this kind of quiet as being the result of having taken a wrong turn somewhere.  If I can’t hear the people in my head anymore then maybe this isn’t the scene that is supposed to come next, or maybe the characters actually wouldn’t have made these choices – for whatever reason, I’ve gone off the road somewhere and then I have to back the bus up and figure out what turn I was supposed to take.

The other important thing I’ve learned is that when the people in my head start to talk, no matter what I’m doing, I need to listen and preferably take notes of some kind.  This has led to writing down snippets of scenes in some rather interesting places: sitting in the car at the dog park, waiting for Gavin’s playdate to show up; in the change room at my health club after a swim; at the Pro Oil, while getting an oil change; in the produce aisle, on the back of my grocery list; and more often than not, on a street corner with Gavin at seven o’clock in the morning, leash in hand, pecking out notes on my iPhone.

These days I have the great luxury of sitting on the deck at the teeny tiny cottage I’ve rented for the summer, a cold drink at my elbow and Gavin snuggled up beside me.  It’s a working holiday and so I paddle in the morning then write for a while, then I swim and nap and write some more.

The people in my head are talking a lot these days and so I will listen.

P.

P.S. If you’re anywhere near Georgian Bay on Friday, July 27th (and really, why wouldn’t you be?) I am giving a talk at 3 p.m. at the Penetanguishene Public Library.  You should come, it’s going to be awesome!