How do You Write? I with my WordBlade and you with your Soul Voice…
Does anyone else feel like writing is their true calling rather than a career choice?
My husband and I were having a writing philosophy discussion earlier – he writes as well but in a very different process, so that he tells me often I should “hurry up and write!” –
But for me writing is a lot about my mindset. Sure, I could put fingers to keyboard and something will come out (and I do) but it won’t necessarily be the story I was continuing last.
The words have always felt like they write themselves and I’m just a vessel for them to speak through. Is it weird that I often feel like my characters are speaking through me rather than me directing them actively, specifically and maniacally.
Honestly it often feels more like them directing me actively, specifically and maniacally. It is almost, to me, a form of communication charged by a wind that blows between some other universe and my own with me as host and conduit.
It is true that the words are mine, but in some strange way it both is and it isn’t. It’s mine in the sense of its construction but it’s meter and tempo is a different matter and I can’t dial in to its source on command – into the winds, but not into it’s exact camber and pitch.
I have to position myself into its path and capture what is spilt but how to create the conditions to achieve that on some version of command…
Well that I’ve found only comes from reading and reading and reading. At first, anything of interest and then a specific one of my works and somewhere along the way I find that I begin editing.
So, I keep on reading and editing, letting in the trickle, until it becomes the flow from the wellspring of the source. Only then is my connection with the words fully harmonised once more.
I have no idea if my writing experience is a reasonably normal one or not (God do I hope someone shares it and gets me or otherwise I might see remarkably unsane) – But it is the only way that works for that type of creative flow for me.
It is vexing at times. Especially when the story you ought to be working on is not the one calling your name and said name-caller will not release you from its siren song until you have devoted to it your full attention and put word to page to its satisfaction.
Then and only then will you be free once more to eat and sleep and breathe life with a will wholly your own.
Deanaera writes... 