Sacred solitude - the magic ingredient

The one thing every writer needs is some kind of solitude.  I need peace, quiet, and space to hear my own thoughts.  Yes, I'm one of the lucky ones who has a quiet space at home.  I've recently re-vamped my workroom, moving a spare desk around so that it sits under the window.  It now looks out over a row of back gardens.  But like many writers, I can get distracted by the view.  And  often it's too quiet there to get the creative juices going.  

But there are definitely times when I need this solitude.  One is when I'm working out the plot for a new novel.  Since I've become serious about getting my work published, the amount of planning that I do before I write the first draft has risen exponentially.  Now before I start writing the first word of the first chapter I will have produced a 20+ page long chapter loan.

My plan will detail the main action taking place in each chapter, and work out whose viewpoint it is in.  Panthera : Death Song has five viewpoints, and the narrative weaves between them like runners passing the baton in a relay race.  It takes a lot of thought to get this right, and solitude is essential.  When the plan is finished, it needs to be checked, in one session and in silence, to make sure there are no continuity bloopers.  That is work that needs my own space and quiet.

Solitude is also essential for the final, out-loud, read-through of the text.  It allows me to listen to my story, to hear where there's too much description, the pace is flagging, or a hiccup in the dialogue.

But it's in the depths of my worst despair when the solitude becomes sacred.  On the days when I get four rejections all at once, and blackness descends.  Then I sit in solitude with my pen and journal and ask the universe in writing what I need to learn from the failures.

The answers come quickly.  Answers like understanding that I don't describe enough of the world, that I need to give my characters more emotional depth, that my internal censor is causing me to pull my punches when I write about what it thinks is a ridiculous idea.

Sacred solitude is essential for these insights, to get at the soul of my writing, and to spur me on to re-write, experiment with different forms, and bolster my belief in my own voice,