When I run writing workshops I
tell the students that all the words they are going to write are already inside
them...rather like your teeth.
Finding those precious words is an act of mining; digging deep into the seams that run through our subconscious and bringing the words and thoughts and images to the surface. One of the most effective ways of mining is simply thinking. Meg Rossoff recently wrote in a blog that writing is only 20% of the work of forming a novel. The other 80% is thinking. I absolutely agree with her.
The problem in our high tech, race around world, is allowing ourselves the space to think. When I was young ( i.e. before marriage and kids and sharing all my space with other human beings) I spent an awful lot of time just lying on my bed dreaming into space, thinking and thinking and thinking. Today with all the distractions in our lives this seems to be so much more elusive, that magical thinking time when you let your mind wander and follow the thought all the way to Mars and back...you know what I mean.
As working writers maybe we find it difficult to give ourselves permission to sit and think, or walk about and think. We might feel that we have to have an excuse, like, ‘Just off to the gym’ or ‘Must take the dog for a walk’ and yes, those might be the best ways for someone to do their thinking.
But thinking is such an important
part of the work of writing that we should not feel we need to make any excuse
at all – if ‘they’ come upon us, sitting on a chair, staring silently into
space. We should be able to say, I’m thinking. And that should be seen as work
as much as walking the dog or bashing away on our laptops.
So the next time you see me
sitting without speaking, eyes glazed over, you will know exactly what I’m
doing..... won’t you?
www.miriamhalahmy.com
5 comments:
Yes, my experience exactly! I have some really good ideas lying in bed in the morning, waiting to get up. It's just accepting that this is working time, rather than lounging about. Defy the stereotypical gubbins put about in our increasingly unimaginative society!
I have a lot of thinking time walking backwards and forwards to Waitrose. I regard that as thinking time! Very necessary.
Adele, I do exactly the same! And Soldier Boy came entirely out of seeing the shadow of leafless branches lying over the footpath on the way to Waitrose.
Descartes did all his work lying in bed. And it hasn't done his reputation any harm. Cartesian geometry came about because he saw a fly buzzing about his room while he was lying in bed.
I'm just off to Paris to do some thinking. I'm not sure how to convince the Inland Revenue that this is an essential part of my work, though... Might cite this post. Thank you, Miriam, it's all so true!
Excellent Anne - we all need to know if we can set out thinking time of against tax!
I love the way when I'm working on a story it takes over most of my 'spare' thinking time .. and some that wasn't actually spare as well (but I seem to have got away with that so far). What I mean is that when I'm in the middle of a story ( I write short fiction and poetry) I tend to think about it when I'm doing anything that doesn't need all my concentration. It's then I find myself trying to do something like put the milk container back into the mug cupboard instead of the fridge! Carol Ross.
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