Writing Alone

I'd heard a strange noise out in the backyard several times, and thought it was machinery, or a squeaky door. Then I realised it was these two, sitting in my apricot tree, pigging out on what was left of the apricots. And having a good chatter together while they were at it. Probably thinking they'd better eat up before dusk and the arrival of the fruit bat (who can't be photographed because he's fast and dark).

I've been thinking a lot this week about writing alone - or why writers need to be alone when they write. Kristi Holl commented on headspace and thinking space. What happens when you're on a deadline and have to give up precious thinking and planning time, simply to get the words on the page and off to the editor. Or whoever is waiting for it. To me, this really is the difference between full-time and part-time writers. Not the writing time, which is often typing time, but the hours you get to spend just thinking about your story and all its possibilities.

I used to kid myself that I could write when my husband was in the room. He wasn't talking to me, so I should be able to block him out and write. No. I might have been typing words into the laptop, but I wasn't writing, not really. Mothers talk about waiting till their kids go down for a nap and then racing to the computer. People talk about waiting until everyone in the house is in bed before they can truly write, or getting up at 4am. It's about silence and solitude.

Not the physical silence (who has that these days?), but the silence inside your head. The quiet space that opens up when you no longer have to answer questions, fetch or find, or just be present for someone. The solitude you feel allows new people to enter the space - your characters. They might hover during the day, they might nudge you with a new idea, but they won't truly appear until you are alone, and belong totally to them.

It's taken me a long time to realise the difference between writing - because I have an hour or two and I know what comes next in the story - and writing alone, just me and the story. It's like being out in the middle of a huge field, flinging your arms out wide, breathing in the air and sunshine, then folding it all inside yourself, creating a space that becomes a world that becomes filled with your story and your people. Your people. Then the writing truly happens. The story is allowed to inhabit you, you can hear what the characters think and say, how they feel, who they are.
Unfortunately the experience only makes me want to throw in my day job, run off to a desert island (with power, of course) and write 7 days a week. I guess that's why I keep buying Lotto tickets!

Setting Goals in Writing

Today, my writers' group is meeting for the last time this year, having lunch and relaxing (and giving back last-minute critiques!). Usually on this final day, I take along everyone's goals that they wrote down way back in March, and we read them out and admit how many of them we didn't reach. This year, we won't be doing this. Back in March, when we would normally talk about goals and then make our lists, it seemed everyone was prevaricating, saying how they didn't really want to, because they never looked at them again, or didn't do anything towards making their goals attainable.

Right now, you're probably thinking: If that's how they feel, then goal setting for them is a waste of time. You may well be right. But for me, not having a range of things to aim for, dream about, take small steps towards, would feel like having my left hand missing. I may not achieve all of my goals every year, but I know that at the very least, writing them down is an important step. Sometimes I may not refer to them again for months, sometimes I get to December and look at that list and think, Hey, I actually managed to achieve that!

This year I discovered that at the top of my list I had written "Work on finding a new method of revision for my novels". Back in February, I'd already been thinking about this aspect of my writing, and knew it was an area that needed some dedicated focus and effort. I remember reading several books on revision, and making notes that I then passed on to my students. Writing took over by July, and I wrote two children's novels in the following months. First drafts, that is. Then I embarked on Margie Lawson's lecture notes on Empowering Character Emotions, and that's where I found what I needed for my revision methods.

So when I read my list of goals, I said, "Aha, I achieved that without realising it was one of my main aims for the year". Was that coincidence? No. And that's where I feel people who dismiss goal-setting don't get it. The brain is an amazing thing. I have learned that if I put something inside it, add more material and ideas, add a firm mental commitment that this is something important and I need to keep working on it - my brain will quietly work away in the background (sometimes a very murky background!) and then come up with the goods when I'm ready.

It's not hocus-pocus, it's having faith that the instrument inside your head can actually work for you, even when you're not conscious of it. It works for solving plot problems, for finding that crucial last line of a poem, for developing your characters, so why shouldn't it work for more "practical" things? But you have to give it the opportunity and the "feeders" as well. And a list of goals, written down and reviewed every now and then, is a great starting point.