Listening to the Voices Inside
On February 23, my good friend wrote a blog post called When the Universe Speaks. In the post, she encouraged each of us to take 20 minutes and watch the video below. So I did. I was absolutely blown away by the words that Elizabeth Gilbert spoke.
When I write, I often feel as though I’m not in control of what is being written, like someone else has the reigns and I’m just conduit for the words that flow from my fingertips. To those that don’t write, this is a hard concept to understand. More often than not, if you tell someone, “Oh, I just had an argument with my character,” they’re going to think you are crazy and try to find the nearest psychiatric hospital to admit you to. For those of us who understand that concept, Elizabeth Gilbert’s words make perfect sense. They vocalize what many of us feel on a day-to-day basis.
There have been nights when I’m exhausted and I just want to sleep and I’m woken up at 1:00 in the morning because my characters want to have a heart-to-heart. Now don’t get me wrong, when I’m well-rested, I love talking to them and hashing out an idea that sounds interesting. But when you have a 17-month-old baby who gets up three to four times a night, a gab session in the wee hours of the morning is not the most appealing thing. However, when my characters want to talk, there’s no dissuading them. They will continue to nag me, making me toss and turn until it’s time to get up.
I’ve had people in my life that don’t understand that I can’t turn off my creative process. I can’t stop writing. I can’t stop seeing these ideas in my head. I have to write. If I don’t, I have all of these images bouncing around inside there. There have been times I’ve gotten headaches because I’m thinking too much about these ideas. During some of those moments, I sat down and wrote and before I knew it, my headache was gone. You can call me crazy if you want to, but it’s true.
Now I encourage those of you who read my post to please spend 20 minutes watching the video below. I’m sure you’ll find it as inspiring and thought provoking as I and many others did.
