Writing Rituals (Lynn Kerstan)

The cat is asleep on the cat tree. I remove a silent, manual can opener from the drawer and attach it to a can. Immediately, Lymond is twining around my legs. For him, can opener means cat food—ideally "tuna juice"—even though he mostly eats dry food. I get the same instantaneous, twining response just by opening the small cupboard where his kibbles are kept.

Sounds, places, odors, even time of day, become associated with specific experiences and stimulate specific responses. Training isn’t reserved for pets. Just as a cat hears a familiar sound and launches into the "Feed Me" suck-up behavior, writers can train their minds by association to glide swiftly from real life into the fictional worlds they are creating.

These rituals may be as simple as showing up for work at the same time each day. A writer who keeps to a schedule has cued her subconscious mind to come to the plate at the chosen hour. And the work space itself, with familiar furnishings and the things we surround ourselves with, sends its own message to the Girls in the Basement. So does the "work beverage," which for me is club soda with a squirt of lime juice or Crystal Light Lemonade with Diet 7-Up. Fact is, all routines are conducive to jump-starting the creative pathways in our brains.

Many of us have more complex rituals. I usually light a candle and pray for inspiration. Can’t hurt. I play the theme song for my POV character, and for the other protagonist if he/she will be in the same scene. I let the music soak into me, because the words and sounds draw me into the character’s thoughts and feelings. Finding the right theme song for a character is one of the fun things about writing. Like a character’s name, it is intensely important to me.

A book can have theme music as well. I usually work in silence, but other authors play the book theme (the soundtrack from Last of the Mohicans is a favorite), or soothing music, or, sometimes, a "white noise" CD while they write. The subconscious opens up to the familiar "time to write" sound like a morning glory unfurls to sunlight.

A short pre-writing bit of self-hypnosis can be effective. In a future post, I’ll tell you how it works. But for now, I’ll describe the routine with which I begin every "new scene" writing session.

Between me and the unexplored territory of an all-new scene lies a wide and bottomless chasm. And I can’t get to the other side as myself. I’ll be writing the scene in a character’s point of view, which means I have to see and feel and experience everything that happens as if I were that character. Well, to a degree. The conscious mind is always in control, which is why it can work the computer while my Regency heroine is shooting the hero. (What? You thought she’d be pouring tea?)

So I begin these writing sessions by entering the mind and the emotions of the POV character at the moments just before the action starts. What are her feelings right now? I try to feel them. She has a goal. I try to focus on it, care about it, steel myself to carry out her plan. I look around, see what she sees, notice what she finds important. It’s really a complex procedure, because every character is different, and each one is differently confronting a different circumstance in each scene. But it gets easier as the character moves deeper into the book, thank the Muse!

Slipping into male point-of-view is an experience all its own, and I have a special ritual to help me get there. No, it doesn’t involve a couch, a flat screen TV, a remote, and a beer. But it does take place on a recliner, where I can stretch out and feel longer and leaner than I am. Eyes closed, I count down slowly from ten to zero and imagine myself morphing into a manly man.

Starting with the feet (large, of course), I feel what it’s like to have big feet with short-clipped nails and hard soles. From there, I work my way north, pausing at each relevant spot to transform my soft female flesh into "his" body. I flex my firm, hairy calves. My muscled thighs. My taut, well-shaped buttocks. Never mind the naughty bits. They’re distracting, and I’m trying to focus here!

Flat, six-pack abdomen. Yeah, all my heros are buff in an athletic, non-bodybuilder way. Great chest, either smooth or hairy (but never ape-like). Fab pecs. Wide shoulders. It’s important to get that sense of formidable size, because I’m pretty short and decidedly unformidable. A man enters a room with a different perspective. He uses his body, especially if it is powerful, in a different way.

Sculpted biceps and forearms. Big hands, callused from hard work. Or long-fingered, graceful hands. Strong jawline, smooth-shaven or stubbly. I feel it all, feel the body and the presence and the attitude. I start to hear his thoughts, which means I hear his "voice"–quite different from the words and sentence structure used by the female protagonist.

And somewhere along the way, I’m across the chasm and into the scene, inhabiting the body and mind of the male who is entering the scene as well. Except that he gets to come alive, and I have to raise up the recliner and start typing.