For the last few weeks, I’ve been writing.<\/p>\n
But I haven’t gone near my PC or Tablet, and haven’t put a word to paper. It’s all been in my head.<\/p>\n
Here’s what I started with: a problem.\u00a0 To move my 25th book forward, I needed my protagonist to have a confrontation with a minor character.\u00a0 I knew what this woman’s role was in the book and how she drove the plot forward.<\/p>\n
Yet she herself was blank.\u00a0 I had no idea what she looked like, what she sounded like, what kind of house she had.\u00a0 None of that was real.\u00a0 And so I mused about it.\u00a0 Walking, showering, and especially working out at the gym.\u00a0 Freeing my mind and focusing on repetitive physical activity (treadmill, weights) has always helped me write.\u00a0 Even if I’m not consciously writing, my subconscious is beavering away at the problem, or answering the questions I’ve posed myself.<\/p>\n
And after a few weeks, the answers came to me when I did something a bit different, worked out three days in a row.\u00a0 Suddenly I could see this woman limping up her driveway lined with impatiens.\u00a0 I knew why she had planted them, and why she limped.\u00a0 Better still, I heard her speaking her first line to my protagonist, and once he answered, the scene took off.<\/p>\n
But it’s still in my head.\u00a0 Building.\u00a0 Blossoming.\u00a0 Adding layers and complications.\u00a0 Making connections with other parts of the book.\u00a0 Many words, many realities.<\/p>\n
I still haven’t written much of anything down, because after so many years of writing, I know my own process well enough to know I’m not ready.\u00a0 I want to feel full of the scene that will anchor a whole chapter and push the book to its dark climax.<\/p>\n
Writing isn’t just the physical act of clicking keys or wielding pen or pencil or even dictating.\u00a0 It takes place invisibly to everyone else but us.\u00a0 That’s why sometimes it feels so magical.\u00a0 And that’s why it’s often hard to answer the well-meant question “What are you working on?”\u00a0 I often don’t want to say, and sometimes I’m not even sure.<\/p>\n
It’s a lot easier when someone asks me “Are you writing a new book?” My reply is “Always.”<\/p>\n
Ionesco said that “A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”\u00a0 To me, thinking about writing is<\/i> writing. For the last few weeks, I’ve been writing. But I haven’t gone near my PC or Tablet, and haven’t put a word to paper. It’s all been in my head. Here’s what I started with: a problem.\u00a0 To move my 25th book forward, I needed my protagonist to have a confrontation with a minor character.\u00a0 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"