0 The Room In My Head - revisited - Linda Strachan

In January 2009 I wrote a blog on ABBA about the  Room in my Head.  It went something like this -

The Room In My Head

As the new year begins I look inside my head to find that room where inspiration might be hiding….   

In the middle of the room there is space, empty of life or furniture.   Walls, accustomed to colour and pattern, stand bereft waiting for design - perhaps imprints of flowers, pattern or activity.

Underfoot boards made of wood and nails move to mark my passage and where the light floods though glass no curtains block its passage. 

And yet the room is full of hope and joy because the sun is shining, casting summer against the emptiness.  
Sounds fill the space with anticipation - strains of mystery that fill my ears and delight my senses, holding me captive - wondering - what I will discover?

This year, many years and stories later, I find my year starting with the Room in My Head well populated by the book I am currently writing.  There is still space in the room although it is well furnished with characters and places, ideas, textures and much activity.

Underfoot  ideas are scattered on the boards like so many sparkling jewels - tempting and clamouring for attention. 

Terrified they might be discarded, their brilliance allowed to fade, dissipate and be condemned to become mere pebbles abandoned on the path to the finale.

Light flooding through the glass varies with each passing day, dependent on the story's progress, from dreary grey rain-clouds...

to breezy sunshine over water.

At the moment the Room in my Head is packed with a tapestry of thoughts, emotions, wrong turns and epiphanies.


It changes daily and fills to bursting with the noise of those who inhabit the story, each with their own goals and intentions, duplicitous or discernible,

but always fascinating.




What fills the Room in your Head?



---------------------------------------------

Linda Strachan is the author of over 60 books for all ages from picture books to teenage novels and the writing handbook Writing For Children.

Linda's latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me  
she is Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh.

Her best selling series Hamish McHaggis is illustrated by Sally J. Collins who also illustrated Linda's retelling of Greyfriars Bobby

website:  www.lindastrachan.com
blog:  Bookwords 

Detail: The Room In My Head - revisited - Linda Strachan

0 Hushing and Holding - Heather Dyer

© នរម

I’ve been reading a book called Fearless Creating: a step-by-stepguide to starting and completing your work of art, by Eric Maisel. Like Dorothea Brande’s classic book Becoming a Writer, this is less a ‘craft’ guidebook, and more a ‘process’ guidebook. It’s the sort of book that describes the creative mind set and shows you how to develop it.

One of the exercises that Maisel says is the most important in the whole book is the ability to ‘hush’ your mind. ‘Hushing’ says Maisel, ‘is what we do when we go into a museum and sit in front of one painting for fifteen minutes.’ Hushing is a ‘quieting and an opening’ – and there is no creative life without this ability to hush.

Hushing sounds a lot like the open, receptive state of mind that is associated with ‘right-brain’ awareness, and is also the state of ‘choiceless awareness’ that meditation aspires to. When the mind is quiet and receptive – and not busy with mental chatter – ideas can rise to the surface.

Some writers achieve this state of mind by walking, swimming, doing yoga or washing the dishes. Others know it when they wake up in the middle of the night to write something in the notepad beside their bed. Maisel suggests that it’s only when the conscious, busy, ‘thinking’ mind has grown quiet that insights and ideas can surface.

Maisel also explains that ‘hushing’ needs to be practiced in conjunction with ‘holding’, if any real work is to be done. 'Holding' is the ability to carry an idea for a book or a painting (or any other project )loosely in the back of your mind as you go about your day. By holding the project in the periphery of your vision you allow the ideas and stimuli that you encounter during the day (or during your working practice) to enter it and inform it. I’ve also heard this process called ‘being in the grist’, when almost everything you experience seems to somehow relate to, or feed into, the container of your novel.

Have you experienced the processes of ‘hushing’ and ‘holding’? If so, how do you achieve them?

 

Heather Dyer's latest book is The Flying Bedroom.
www.heatherdyer.co.uk

 

Detail: Hushing and Holding - Heather Dyer