I hear voices in my head. And often, I talk to them.
When I'm a passenger in a car, when I'm puttering in the kitchen, when I'm taking out the garbage, when I'm picking up after my dog in the yard and, especially, when I'm walking. I walk a lot.
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| Walking in the woods. Yup. Voices! |
So while I'm stepping out along the local country roads, or up and down the beach at The Point where we spend our summers, or around the streets of my neighbourhood, the voices of characters who will find their way onto the page of my next story accompany me.
Sometimes I have complete conversations with real people - you know that thing where you revisit something that happened days ago when the words just wouldn't come? And finally you've had time to think and process it all? And now you have the words, ready and effective? Yup. That thing. I do it all the time when I'm walking, long after the opportunity to express myself has come and gone.
It's still satisfying.
But the best voices I hear are the voices of characters who speak up out of....nowhere. Magic? I don't know, but it's part of my creative process and, even more importantly, part of how I deal with the messiness of life. I walk, I talk through whatever is on my mind, and I find new voices - characters who live in the story I'm writing right now or the one that I didn't even know was coming next. Sometimes, if a story is plodding along or hits a fence, the conversations I have on my walk - and that means listening as well as "talking" - help me climb over and keep going, into the next field, down the next road.
When I walk (and talk, and listen), I just feel better.
"To walk alone in London [or anywhere] is the greatest rest," said Virginia Woolf.
I agree. And so do the voices in my head.
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| My favourite walk: up and down the shore at The Point, listening to the voices of the Northumberland Strait |
