Re: So…

I try and make sure that I write two pages a night every night (however with the hiatus of this summer I haven’t managed that!) and I do feel kind of guilty if I don’t. But yes, inspiration can strike at any time – I think it’s documented in the pages of this journal somewhere that one season stormed into my mind whilst I was swimming, and demanded to be written that I had to cut short my swim, and go and sit in the cafe just outside and write it there and then.

I do find I have to jot things down else other ideas will get in mind and I’ll lose them. Do you not remember that I have a small spiral bound notebook of squared paper (ClaireFontaine) that I have to carry with me everywhere?

So…

…do you have to prepare for this? Does is occupy a lot of your mind-time? I mean, do you stand there in the kitchen making jam but thinking “Hmm, if Ben sat next to Hanna in the cafe things would be great, but then if Einar came in then…” and then remember that for later on, or do you jot down notes and refer to them, or do you somehow store everything up and, like, let it flow later on?

Again it’s interesting to me, as I send emails to myself at home when I get an art or music idea at work, but I can never expand on them until I am at home, as I have to be near my equipment to finish them (and since I get tired in the evenings I often never finish them at all). But I guess all you need is a pen and paper and sufficient time to work the idea into something useful?

When I’m writing the story, I’m there in the story, either up above, observing the scene omnipiently or down amongst the characters in their minds seeing, hearing and breathing what they are seeing, hearing and breathing.

I have an end goal and various plot points in my mind, but other than that the story takes me where it takes me. I know that there is a road to be travelled ahead, however what there is exactly around the next corner is as much as a surprise for me as it is for the reader.

(and it’s mind to pen – and will be at least until I get a laptop – writing in my bedroom on the big clunky desktop just doesn’t do it for me!)

Personally, when writing a story I visualise the scene at first, then when characters start talking I get much closer to the action and the characters start taking control of what gets said. It’s really the same as running through one of those “what I really should have said” conversations in your mind except that of course when you’re writing you can go back and revise it as often as you like.

When I’m composing music I am very rarely able to ‘hear’ it all in advance, and even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to create music to match it. I just dont have that skill/talent. Instead, as you said in your comment, when composing music I work with whatever comes out of my fingers.

I should have been clearer – do you sit and purge your mind, or do you gaze wistfully away into the difference and imagine the scene in your mind’s eye and write what you see? I imagine you must have all sorts of methods for writing, but, yes, I was interested in what might happen between your imagination and your pen/keyboard.

I mean, when I write music or do painting/art I am almost always improvising and playing with what comes out of my hands.

Where does anything ever come from? There are as always, bits that I am not so happy with, but nothing that can’t now wait until I have the novel as a whole sitting before me on my desk and ready for revising…

Now if pesky work could just go and get lost, I could continue…

Chapter Two might be a fraction shortly, but by then, they will only just be back in Reykjavik…