Where I do my best writing
Writing doesn’t require my sitting before a keyboard. What is required, however, is to think.
I tend to do my best thinking away from my desk. Snippets of dialogue and plot twists come to me while I’m in bed or the shower, or while slogging through mundane tasks like making lunches or waiting in traffic. Even when I’m not able to jot them down, they find a place in my mind. (Not that I can access all of them again; like my keys, they get misplaced.) And so, I’ve been doing a lot of writing. It’s going well, too. For example, while sitting in my optometrist’s office, I finally figured out how to murder three of my characters.
I have also been reading some great books. Right now, I’m immersed in The Metaphysical Club: The Story of Ideas in America by Louise Menand. This Pulitzer Prize winner has absolutely nothing to do with my writing a mystery, but it touches on Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson was one of my father’s favorite writers/thinkers.
My father was a writer/thinker himself. He passed away 16 years ago; I knew him well yet not at all. Reading about Emerson, however, is helping me understand my dad’s world view and, by extension, our relationship. It also is helping me shape the book I am writing about him.
All this without a keyboard.
4 comments
(Chuckling)Strangely, this post made sense to me. I wrote a post today on getting plot twist while I’m in the shower, or stuck with my hands in dishwater up to my elbows. For some odd reason, I’m a water baby lately. Submerge me and the neurons in my brain start charging and going wild. (Hugs)Indigo
I know exactly what you mean and can relate well. I still remember looking out of a window while at the sink doing dishes–hating every minute of it; I hate cleaning–then, wham, one of those moments when the heavens part and brilliance pours out. I am bragging in no way. Chances are my hands were too wet to hold a pen, let alone write on paper and so the my brilliant thought was lost to the ages. But so it goes with writing–and dishes.
I am a shower thinker and writer. I get most of my inspiration in the shower. I don’t know what it is about that environment, but it turns on the creative juices and they just flow. My wife recently bought me a waterproof notepad called AquaNotes which suction cups to the shower wall. I wish my office were in a shower.
I am an aspiring writer, so please heed my comments lightly. I have only written 80 pages of a horror story that is unfinished and that was a few years ago since I have even touched it. I am giving it another try and have purchased Book in a Month by Victoria Schmidt. She mentioned an exercise (The Rocking Chair Rule) that you came up with and also wrote your website in it as a helpful resource, hence why I am here. I also find that I come up with story ideas/plots at odd moments in the shower, at work, driving, etc. I found it helpful using my iPhone as either a voice recorder if I’m driving or doing something that requires the full dexterity of my digits or an app (short for application) called YouNote where I can type it in. I find it important to jot/voice down the ideas as they come because they seem very fleeting. Once they have surfaced or evolved, as you will, they are like vapor mist fighting a nor-eastor.. Please keep posting in your blog/website. I need all the help and inspiration that I can get to achieve my goal of becoming a published writer. I want to become meaningful to the world and I think this is the way I can achieve it.
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