Solitude for writers

I'm always getting moans from people that they can't find the time to write.  It isn't true, of course.  If we really want to write we'll find the time, even if it is only five or ten minutes a day,

What I think these people often lack even more is the chance for solitude.  There's a reason why the lonely writer in their garret image sprang up.  It's because it's true.  We need the aloneness to get the solitude we need to get in touch with our inner self.  And it's from that true part of us that our real work is birthed.

There's nothing quite like the pleasure of getting home and leaving the noisy and shallow world behind.  When I'm home I don't have the radio or TV on all the time.  My listening and viewing is strictly limited to things I actually want to hear and see each day.  The rest of my time at home I spend in solitude,  reading, writing, painting, or out taking a quiet walk by the shore.  My mind is quiet, and open to the  intuitive nudges that often underlie our best ideas.

I've recently re-written two long short stories as novellas.  In both, the basic story had been discovered, leaving me free to play with expanding the setting and characters.  I didn't plan out the new content before I wrote, I let the quiet voice inside me guide the writing.

When I finished the first novella, Water Moon Down, I originally wrapped the story up in a 'happily ever after' way.  But a day's solitude, and listening to the still, small voice inside, told me the ending was weak.  It wrapped everything up too neatly and conveniently,  and it gave no hint of the characters' lives continuing beyond the story,  I listened to my Muses, and re-wrote the ending,  it's now more ambivalent, with Alenis getting fired from her job, but having the opportunity to work more closely with the alien Dela she's just rescued.

I have notebooks scattered all around the house.  Often when I'm eating my lunch, or on the rare occasions when I iron something, ideas will pop into my head.  I've learned to stop what I'm doing and write then down immediately,  I got the whole outline for the second book in my Jade Chronicles series that way.  The whole story spewed out of my head and onto the page in one long splurge.

Many people are afraid of silence, afraid of being alone with themselves.  But for a writer, being alone with our intuition, giving space and time to that 'still, small voice', is essential if we're to do our best  work, work that matters to us, and makes a difference to the world.