What a Gift

“Unless he is writing mechanically, the writer does not experience his writing as an act of creation. He experiences it as an act of discovery. It comes or happens or is given to him. And when it does, he recognizes it at once for his own.”

Norman Podhoretz wrote this in his memoir, Making It. To me this really describes how it feels to write a novel. I’m not creating anything. I’m just eavesdropping as these interesting people in my head start talking to each other, and if I listen long enough and write down what they’re saying to each other, they give me plenty of material for telling their stories.

I don’t know where these voices come from. Especially Louise, my main character and the first voice of all of them that ever came to me. But I don’t need to know where they come from. If I analyzed it, or tried too hard to explain it to myself, I’d be afraid I would lose the connection somehow. This sense somehow that I’m just listening in, eavesdropping, snooping around in the lives of others, which I really enjoy doing. What a gift these characters are giving me. What a wonderful way to spend my time.