I spent most of yesterday writing. Which was awesome and cathartic as I haven’t really been writing since I got sick earlier this month.
When I got to work and was telling my co-workers about it they started asking me about the process of being a writer.
“How do you get ideas?” “How do you make characters?” “Where does your creativity come from?” “I could never do that.”
“How do you even come up with things to write? If I wrote a story it would be 10 pages long and then I would be done. That all I have in my life to write about. Where do you get it all?” Kenya wondered.
I tried to hide my surprise because…
I develop story and ideas in the shower, while I’m doing my hair and makeup, while I’m fixing breakfast, driving to work, during my lunch, driving home, eating dinner, brushing my teeth and in the moments before I fall asleep.
I write while I’m doing laundry, dishes, making the bed. I have even, god help me, come up with story ideas during sex. Obviously not great sex or I wouldn’t be able to think much less remember my name, but still…
The point is – the only time I am not processing on some level, the stories I write- is when I am crunching numbers at work, which takes a whole different level of my brain and I consider it a break from the churning of the creative thought process.
Other than that I am almost always thinking, plotting, imagining. Even while shopping: my characters might eat that/wear that/desire that food/clothes/houses, etc. and I make notes about it.
Sometimes at the stop light I write on my forearm and when I get home I have ink up to my elbow.
It’s just who I am. I don’t know that there is a shutoff switch. Ideas come in, they’re processed categorized, filtered or put in the percolator until they’re ready to be used.
And for the first time during my co-worker’s questions and curiosity I realized not everyone does this. I think I’ve been assuming, even in some small way, that everyone drifts off into lala land and comes back in 5 minutes at the stop light thinking they’ve just been a pirate on the high seas, or raced across the plains on a pony chasing down a buffalo or swam with mermaids – until the light turned green and back to the real world.
I’ve just been assuming that anyone thinks of stories during the commercial break or while they’re scribbling notes during a board meeting.
And with the sudden understanding that not everyone does this – I realized – ohmygod. No wonder they look at me so weird most of the time.
No wonder.
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