Inside This Writer’s Mind

I often get asked what goes through my mind, as if being a writer puts me in a special category of thinking. Maybe, in a way it does, but I have the ordinary thoughts of grocery lists and cleaning schedules and dinner menus that everyone else thinks about. So what’s different? Is there really a difference to the way writer’s think? While I cannot pretend to know what other writer’s think, I can speak for myself and say, sure, why not? I do believe I think a bit differently, more creatively, if you will. That is not to say all people can’t or don’t, as I do believe anyone can think as a writer does, it just may come with a bit more effort.

I am not sure how to really describe what I see or how I think, except that I can see more than what a scene on a street can depict. For instance, take a young woman and a man sitting a few feet apart on a park bench. You may say, yes, that’s a coupl sitting on a park bench. But I say, no, it’s a woman sitting on a park bench feet away from the man she loves because she is struggling with how to tell him she is pregnant. The man is sitting there wondering why his girlfriend has become so distant lately and what did he do to make the situation come to fruition.
Take a woman hugging another woman who has just stepped off a plane. They embrace in a flood of tears, my mind sees a young woman meeting her birth mother after 25 years. I then go on to try to figure out how each must be feeling and the journey that led them here.

We often here there are three sides to every story, the truth, and the version of the two it involves. I believe there are many facets to a story. There is what we see, the truth, and then there is the way my mind perceives and interprets a scene. Maybe, the truth is too boring for my mind, but I find it utterly fascinating to let my mind wander off and come up with the scores of possibilities. It’s so much more exciting to come up with my own conclusions and it’s something, a gift that I can carry around with me and takes up little to no space in my bags.

Ok, so I have, in fact, one more quirk that may differentiate my thinking from others. I have not always felt comfortable speaking about this one as I feel that most people cannot relate and tend to see it as a reason to put people into padded cells, but I hear voices in my head.

The voices of all my characters that run around playing havoc with my sleep schedule and find new and creative ways to make their dramas very real to me. They talk to me, sometimes constantly as they plead with me to write their story or find them some very attractive sexy and brilliant love of their life. They argue and fight with me when I throw a monkey wrench into their plans just to see how they can and will handle it. My villains make me think that leading a life of crime is a natural and often fun thing to do and please, please won’t I just let them loose to commit all sorts of helter skelter (hari kari is what my mom would have said, however, I just found out I cannot use this…see below).

However, please do not think that because my characters speak to me they tell me everything. Often they don’t tell me a lot, like their name, or sex, or they leave out vital details that would have been good to know before I wrote fifteen chapters! It can be a definite love/hate relationship that is enough to drive the sanest person insane. But insane, I am not. I am just me, a writer, and this is just how my mind works. Some people are born to be great with numbers, and I applaud them, for I try to think about numbers infrequently. I really dislike math and I find it troubling and hard, but give me words….or give me death.

Ok, now I feel I must clarify an earlier statement on hari kari. I just asked a co-worker to spell it for me, and he said, the Japanese ritual suicide? So, I immediately rushed to Google and looked it up. Ouchy! I have been using the term horribly over the years. Helter skelter is much more fitting to what I am trying to convey. Blah…here I try to call myself a wordsmith…let me get back to my dictionary.