100 Day Creative Challenge 70: Inside My Head
One of the challenges of being a fiction writer is that I live inside my head a lot of the time. My characters accompany me in my everyday comings and goings. They follow me everywhere like toddlers attached to my legs—when I’m having coffee, listening to music, driving in my car, in the shower, shopping.
Being ripped out of imaginary worlds and into the real world can be quite shocking, abrasive and upsetting. It’s like being woken from a deep sleep by a fire alarm in a hotel and being told to evacuate by a hunky fireman while you stand there blinking sleep crusted eyes and shivering in your nightie. (This really happened and I want to tell the whole story but back to the blog!)
Writers need to be allowed to disappear into other worlds and to be gently brought back into reality. This is how we create. That’s why going on writing retreats, having space and time to write in solitude are essentials of life to a writer. We are not like other beings.
Writers are other-worldly in a sense. Jesus famously said, They do not belong to this world any more than I do. John 17:16 (NLT) I can relate to this as a person of faith and as a writer. There’s something spiritual about what we do when we create—whether it’s writing, music, painting, singing, dancing or sewing. God inspires us in our creativity and we are different. We are in the world, but often, not of it.
So next time you’re creating and you wonder why you feel grumpy or upset when you’re pulled out of your other worlds you’ll know why. If you’re the partner of a creative artisan, allow them to take time to re-enter the world gently. We’re only human after all.
It is kind of ridiculous that a poet is expected to live in the real world. Sanober Khan
