Barbara Eberhard's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-process"
Hours Lost
Last time I looked at the clock, it was noon. Now, it's after 2 pm.
That's what happens when I write. I lose hours. I get engrossed in the world I'm creating, and the rest of the world - the actual world - disappears for a while.
I have several thoughts about those hours lost.
First, it's kind of amazing to me. I have always lost hours in books, but up until I was 50, they were by reading. I can spend a whole day with a good book, sitting on the couch or in a chair. If the book is good enough, it will be hard for me to pull away from it, to resist turning the page one more time to find out what's going to happen next.
In some ways, the time lost to writing is the same, in that, I'm always interested in what's going to happen next. Sometimes I know; sometimes I don't know all of it. If I know what's coming, I get a great deal of pleasure in watching my ideas and plans come to fruition. If I have a vague notion of the end goal, but not a set plan, then writing becomes a fun exercise in trying to find the path between where I am and where I want to be. Some of the best magic happens in those times - and not just when I'm writing fantasy novels!
Second, it's a little scary. For example, today. I literally "lost" two hours. I looked at the clock, and it was 12 pm. I looked again, and it was 2 pm. I wrote seven pages in that time. And I was so absorbed in what I wrote that the hours went by without notice. That's kind of scary.
Third, this absorption is part of the reason I don't know that I'll ever been a full-time author. I love writing, and I'm so blessed to have ideas keep coming (I have ideas for at least four more books already written down). But the total submersion into writing - and the strength it takes to come back from it - is so powerful, and as I said, a little scary. I worry that, if I did write full time, every day, several hours of the day, I'd have even more trouble coming out of my reveries.
But, in the end, I love the process of writing. I've been very lucky in that it's rare that the ideas don't come. And more often than not, probably once every weekend I write, some nugget finds its way out of my brain and onto the page that just astounds me with its beauty or cleverness or fixing of a problem I'd been struggling with.
And that makes the hours lost - well, in some ways, they are also hours found.
That's what happens when I write. I lose hours. I get engrossed in the world I'm creating, and the rest of the world - the actual world - disappears for a while.
I have several thoughts about those hours lost.
First, it's kind of amazing to me. I have always lost hours in books, but up until I was 50, they were by reading. I can spend a whole day with a good book, sitting on the couch or in a chair. If the book is good enough, it will be hard for me to pull away from it, to resist turning the page one more time to find out what's going to happen next.
In some ways, the time lost to writing is the same, in that, I'm always interested in what's going to happen next. Sometimes I know; sometimes I don't know all of it. If I know what's coming, I get a great deal of pleasure in watching my ideas and plans come to fruition. If I have a vague notion of the end goal, but not a set plan, then writing becomes a fun exercise in trying to find the path between where I am and where I want to be. Some of the best magic happens in those times - and not just when I'm writing fantasy novels!
Second, it's a little scary. For example, today. I literally "lost" two hours. I looked at the clock, and it was 12 pm. I looked again, and it was 2 pm. I wrote seven pages in that time. And I was so absorbed in what I wrote that the hours went by without notice. That's kind of scary.
Third, this absorption is part of the reason I don't know that I'll ever been a full-time author. I love writing, and I'm so blessed to have ideas keep coming (I have ideas for at least four more books already written down). But the total submersion into writing - and the strength it takes to come back from it - is so powerful, and as I said, a little scary. I worry that, if I did write full time, every day, several hours of the day, I'd have even more trouble coming out of my reveries.
But, in the end, I love the process of writing. I've been very lucky in that it's rare that the ideas don't come. And more often than not, probably once every weekend I write, some nugget finds its way out of my brain and onto the page that just astounds me with its beauty or cleverness or fixing of a problem I'd been struggling with.
And that makes the hours lost - well, in some ways, they are also hours found.
