The best
time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
— Agatha Christie
If Agatha
Christie said this, then it is not so difficult for budding writers (like
myself) to admit the same. I think of all the times when I’m doing housework,
and ideas pop into my head, and I make a mental note to write them down before
they just flit away into the vast cosmos. I wonder if there is a world
somewhere—the world of lost ideas. I wonder if there is a way of entering that
world, in order to retrieve some of the ideas that got away. Because they do
slip away if you don’t catch them when they first appear. Many of them appear
while doing mundane chores. But many of them come vividly to life in the
darkness. How many times I lie awake at around 5am and ideas rush into my head,
and I ponder each of them, turning them over and over in my mind. Can this
work? Can I write about that? How will I develop this or that character? Should
I do so? And so on. Some of the ideas don’t pass muster in the light of day. It’s
odd what the early morning darkness will do for your creativity. Some of the
ideas are wild, fantastical, and completely irrational—but they are exciting to
think about because there is an element of dare and bravado to them; that can
disappear in the waking light. My mind is somehow braver in the dark, and it is
an aspect of me that I don’t understand. This can also be true for finding
solutions to problems—personal or otherwise. I come up with such wonderful
solutions in the dark—things I’m going to say (and mean), decisions that will
be irrevocable--the new me with a tough no-nonsense attitude. I come up with
quips and sarcastic retorts to rude people and can plan out my replies to those
who like to talk over me when I try and speak. And then the dawn breaks and in
the light of day I’m not so tough. I have to struggle to be brave and to
remember my promises to myself made in the dark. And it is the same with
writing. The ideas are there--hundreds of ideas. I don’t lack for ideas for
what to write about. The problem is choosing the one idea I want to focus on.
The ideas have probably been there for years, inside of me, waiting for an
opening. Sitting down and actually writing about them releases them, expands
them, solidifies them and makes them real. But in the darkness they all seem so
viable. In the light, they are not. In fact, some of them can seem quite
ridiculous.
I try to
pay attention to my inner voice, the one that tells me what path is probably
best to follow these days. My heart is in accord with this inner voice. So I have
often experienced that my inner voice tells me to have several projects going
at one time—I work a little on one of them during one week, and then suddenly
the following week, my inner voice suggests that I focus on another project. I
don’t know if it is like this for other writers. For example, I am currently
working on a book of short stories and a science fiction novel, but the book
that is ready to go at present is a book of reflections about workplaces and
the work world that I’ve been mulling over for the last month or so. Most of
the essays and reflections that make up the book were written during the past
two years, but it is the actual compilation of these that took some time. How
best to present them, which ones should come first--that sort of thing. It all
fell into place, and once again I marvel at the creative process. I understand so
little of it, but it is so exhilarating to experience. The freedom associated
with it is like nothing I have ever experienced before, and once you taste that
freedom, you will not trade it away for anything.
