“That’s The Craziest Thing I’ve Ever Heard!”
Yup, that’s me in the photo above, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
A couple of weeks ago I had a wonderful opportunity to speak at a library’s book club meeting. I love book clubs! Usually when I attend these most everyone in the room has already read the book or is part of the way through it. So they have questions and I get the chance to talk about some of my favorite characters and scenes from the book. This is a diversion from my routine of having to tell people the key selling points of the book and why they should buy it!
At this book club a very nice gentleman in the front row asked me “ What is your writing process?” I had to laugh, because I’m not your typical author so therefore my process, if that’s what you call it, is far from typical! I mean how do you explain to someone you don’t know that when you sit down to write you literally leave this world and step into a world you aren’t even sure exists but that you know it must because where else would this stuff come from? Saying all of that without sounding like you are crazy! It’s tough.
So I told him (please reference the photo above). I don’t sit at a desk. I sit in a chair with my legs extended in front of me. This can be a lounge chair on a beach somewhere, a solid chair and a foot stool in a library or my own comfy chair and ottoman at home, but I have to be stretched out. I then place my laptop on my legs, put my noise canceling headphones on my head, turn the volume up as loud as it will go, and play music!! He shook his head in disbelief, laughed and said, “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard!” I know! Right?
He then asked me what I listened to for music and I told him usually only 5-6 songs that play on a continuous loop. I don’t choose the songs, they will choose me. I’ll find one or two in “Suggested for You” playlists that the algorithms choose for me on Apple Music or I might hear one on the local radio station in my car. It’s really random where I pick them up, but they definitely find me. It’s not about the lyrics for me, it’s about the cadence. That seems to be the common denominator in them, the cadence of these songs all match the intensity I feel while trying to write. It’s the drum beat to my marching orders. As I was explaining this to him I said, “And it’s really that simple, I listen to the music and then I write what I see.” That’s when I heard a woman in the back of the room gasp, lean over to her friend and whisper loudly, “She writes what she sees.” There was a tinge of awe in her voice. You know that mystical, creepy, oh-my-word-can-you-believe-it kind of tone.
I thought about the woman’s comment the whole way home that night. For me, writing what I see is exactly how my book The Gathering Room - A Tale of Nelly Butler unfolded and it’s exactly how the next book came to life as well. I see the whole story in my mind like a movie. I don’t have an outline, character development cards, a flow chart. Nothing. I just write what I see. From start to finish, only thing missing is the popcorn! Her comment really made me stop and think about what I “see”. How is it possible that I really do see these things. Actually see what is happening. How is that possible?
Take for instance a scene in the next book. It’s a shipping office in Bristol England, it’s 1635. I can sit here right now and see the interior of that building as if I had been there many times, as if I were standing in it at this moment. It’s opulent, because this particular business if very successful financially. They specialize in shipping goods to and from the expanding markets in the New World. The whole feel of the place is that it’s operating on the cutting edge of everything that is happening in the world at that moment. Exploration and colonization, that’s where the money is to be made.
In my mind, what I see when I walk into this building is dark stained wood walls but the space is not dark. There are huge windows that run floor to ceiling. The panes in the windows are perfect squares that stack neatly one on top of another until you get to the rounded tops of the window casings where the panes become more curved. The glass in the panes is wavy and distorts the view of the ship masts that can be seen in the harbor beyond. There are rows and rows of desks with a clerk at each one. Their heads down as they scribble away in ledger books, dipping their feathered quills into inkwells stained black. Their jobs are to keep track of everything that is being unloaded and loaded onto the ships seen in the distance. Everything from fine woolen linens from the north to colonists wishing to escape the overcrowded cities for a fresh start in the New World.
The man who runs this machine has his office high above, where if he steps out of his office door he can stare down on the clerks below him. An intricately carved wood railing decorates the walkway between him and the open space. The stairs leading up to his office are in the back corner of the first floor. They are iron filigree steps and curve in a spiral as you ascend them. The bronze railing is highly polished and smooth to the touch. As you arrive at the top of the walkway you see the clerks down below but if you look up the ceiling is painted in a beautiful mural of the high seas. There, ships battle storms, ride upon the waves, or drift in the calm waters of tropical islands. The colors are vibrant and stand out agains the dark walls. The turquoise and blues of the sea contrast with the white of the billowing sails and clouds. Each ship represents one in the fleet of the shipping company. Their figureheads and names delicately painted just large enough to be identified.
Upon entering the office of the man you are struck by the back wall that is lined with bookcases and filled with hand sewed leather bound books. The man’s desk is a massive piece of mahogany. This wood is native to the newly discovered sub tropical area of the New World and this desk represents this man’s wealth as well as his status. The man himself is seated at the desk in a chair that hearlds back to a different time for him. The chair is a sea captain’s chair and it is the only thing in the room that speaks to the man’s origins in life before he found himself surrounded by luxury. The chair and the lines on his face, they belie the years he spent before the mast. Fighting against the wind and the sun to forge his own future, one where he learned every detail of the shipping industry so that he could someday rule over it. This is a man who built his own empire.
How is possible that I can see this? That I can so easily see this building, this room, this man? How does something like that happen? It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of!