I won’t say I hate silence. I don’t. What I hate is boredom. because, you know, I’m ADD AF. Which means I get bored, I forget what I was doing and I wander off to … flit around aimlessly.
Take walking in this neighborhood. it was fine with Dan, because we talked while walking. But once he couldn’t because his knees got really bad, I started walking with headphones (the kind that are over the ear earbuds, so I still ear road noise.) The problem is that cars drive insanely in our picturesque curving roads. So I can’t follow audio books. So–
So I tried to walk without audio books. You’d think just looking around would be entertainment enough, only it isn’t. So, once I stopped walking with audio books, my walks went somewhere between a block and two. I didn’t exactly decide to go back. I just got bored, started thinking of things to do at home, and the walk ended. (Which is why I need somewhere to walk TO.)
Cleaning is kind of the same thing. If I don’t have an audio book going, I just wander off and do …. well, nothing, but I start a lot of chores.
This is to say that I don’t have much time of silence in my life. Which is a problem, because silence is absolutely needed for the story to talk to me. Oh, not to hear the voice. I hear the voice when I’m writing, and starting to write brings the voice, but to figure out what’s going on.
I’m not a pantser. Not precisely. I just suffer from a vicious back brain, who has worked out the entire story but won’t let me know what’s going on until I write each chapter. How this differs from pantsing is that I NEVER need to go back and fix stuff. It just falls in place and I’m foreshadowing stuff I’m not aware of.
That said, I like to at least have glimpses of moments ahead and a good idea of what the villains are up to, because otherwise writing is like playing Calvin ball.
The plot of Orphans of the Stars is super-complex, and it was driving me insane, because the bad guys can’t be stupid. (In this case they aren’t even bad by their lights. Well, half of them aren’t. By the imperative of their culture they’re doing the best (to assure the survival of their ancient and powerful family.) That this means committing what we consider horrible crimes is neither here nor there. Their highest moral flight is ancestor worship, so…
Anyway, it’s been bothering heck out of me. And I realized I’d forgotten how to bring about silence enough to plot without flitting off to do something else.
You see, I used to do this, long ago, before kids. If I was stuck on a book, I’d ask Dan to go driving at night. For it to work, I couldn’t be tired enough to fall asleep. Which meant that I was awake, he was driving and playing music, and I don’t see much out there, and the brain turned to picking the story apart.
Then I got published and tried to force myself to outline, outline outline. Did it too, for seven books. It was blah, but I did it.
And then… well, car trips are difficult to just space out in when you have kids. The kids talk. They’re a whole entertainment system. Even when the kids are adults, such as the trip to Liberty con and back.
…. So this last week Dan has been on vacation. Which, btw, is death of work for me too. I barely blogged which is an issue since ATH is having its annual fundraiser.
The reason for the vacation, too, was to take care of a bunch of things that required us to drive up to two/three hours away. Legal, financial… stuff we don’t have here in town, basically.
So we did that. And even though only the return trips were at night, it worked as much as it ever did.
Not only do I now know what’s going on — the precipitating incident was a DUH of course that happened — but I understand why Skip’s mom had to be a voice character. And I have scenes towards the end of the book, as I did with No Man’s Land.
Now all I need is MORE keyboard time.
So do you work better in silence, or do you need brainstorming? Do you need to know where the journey ends, at least? Or do you have to know every turn and step on the road?
Mad Genius Club 
12 responses to “Listening to the story”
A combination of silence and idea-bouncing. Walking on a treadmill is great for that, because I’m moving, I have themed music playing quietly (to drown out/mask other things like legal case discussions [!]), but I can let my mind safely drift. Yard work is also good, as long as it does not require intense concentration or physical effort.
Otherwise it is sit in chair with notepad or keyboard, and write the thing.
I need calm and an absence of distractions more than I need silence per se. Much plotting and some longhand writing (so so slooooow) has been done when I left the cellphone at home and went to hang out at the streaming relatives’ house with my notebook in hand, while we watched the latest Jason Statham movie.
Walks are my usual method. Movement does a good job of stimulating the thoughts.
The other thing I’ve found works well is a hot bath, particularly if I can put an appropriate soundtrack on my little waterproof speaker. And it lets me say to my internal boss, “No, no, I’m not relaxing in a bubble bath with a glass of wine, I’m doing very important plotting work, Publisher Boss Lady. It’s so productive, I should be charging you time-and-a-half for this!”
When you move around, the thoughts are joggled out of place and have to settle back in new configurations.
I need less time around people to really get ideas going. People are exhausting!
I need to stop refinishing/painting furniture. This is the part where we ask “Sarah, are you nuts?” The answer is probably yes.
Well, we’re writers. A certain amount of nuts is almost a requirement.
Apparently I need distractions for the story to come stampeding over the horizon. Nearly couldn’t sleep because the undead legionnaires needed to have their say (refugees/invaders from the South fleeing bad stuff doing other stuff, more about the magic, weaving in the girl in the plot, tension and conflict with the legion in the middle, old things waking and causing badness to happen, explaining some of it but leaving enough out…).
I need to write more. A LOT more.
I need alone time. Quiet, or music. But no one I need to pay attention to, respond to.
I can work on plots in the early morning, in the dim light, nice and warm in bed. Action scenes . . . Don’t judge me! On the stationary bike with an old Beach Boys CD playing. The rhythm’s right, or something.
I have to be in the right kind of quiet to handle writing. A looming sense of deadlines or need to write. And NO distractions.
Sadly, medical issues means that my usual writing time-late at night-isn’t practical right now.
>Which is why I need somewhere to walk TO
This. I do not understand “hiking” at all. Hiking to a campsite? Sure. Hiking to a river to fish? Sure. Just wandering about in the wilderness? WHY!?! I know the answers, so no need to reply with them. They just don’t resonate with me.
> I’ve found works well is a hot bath
Hot tub! But it’s 98 degrees out right now. Not good hot tubbing weather.
Most hikes have destinations. Hikes to a mountain top, to a waterfall, through the various sights along the way.