A day of the possessed writer

This post is part of a project created by Trevor Cohen to give an insight into the very different working days of anyone who calls themselves a writer. To be more specific, in my case, a possessed writer.

This writer’s day begins at night, among the fragments of thoughts, images the brain has stocked from previous days, chopped up and rearranged. Some are unrecognisable, others are walking emanations of the story that is in the process of creation. When the story scenes that flick past in dreams are there when you open your eyes, when you eat, walk about in a daze, half in another world, and you resent the time spent away from the words, then you are possessed.

I use time spent preparing food, walking the dog, doing bits of housework or gardening to think scenes through. It’s not good enough to have a plot; the characters have to be willing to go along with it. They have to live, and I have to know how their minds work. It’s tiring, being in so many heads at once, walking beneath a beating, baking Mediterranean sun when the cloud are heavy and full of rain, and my wellies are sucking their way through mud. The light in my head is not the same as the light that falls on my face, and even the birds will sound different. I move in a twilight zone, half here, half there, and it makes me silent, lost in thoughts I can’t share.

There has to be silence to be possessed by the writing. The city is no good, too distracting and enervating. The sharp, pointy noises claim attention, barge into the thoughts arranging themselves in an orderly fashion and scatter them. Putting them back together again is like herding cats. Music is the same, though less aggressive. It demands to be listened to, and so I do. I can only write in the quiet of the countryside, with the soft, gentle noises of trees and birds, dogs sighing in their sleep, the stove humming, clock ticking. The interior of my house is full of ghosts, the shades of people who may or may not have existed. These few rooms can grow into worlds I’ve never seen, and I can walk with people I have never met, in a story that only needs prompting to unfold and write itself.

If you’d like to read a sample of what this particular writer produces, you could try this one for starters.