Seaborn--or what do you become (or where do you go) when you write?

  Here's a piece I spent a couple hours painting today--along with a detail.  It started as an idea about getting into character when a writer writes.  Much of my last two books have taken place underwater, and in my imagination, this is what it looks like.  (Click the pics to see them larger).

What do you see in your head when you write?  Are you the POV character?  Do you step through scenes as if you are in a movie?  Do you speak the dialogue aloud, smell the roses in the vase on the dining room table, reach out to touch the embroidered fabric on the chairs? How do you write?  How many of your words come directly from the moving pictures in your imagination?  I'm curious, because I am a very visual person.  I like to see the places about which I write.

What's weird is that I can look at the picture in this post and think, "Hey, that's the world I spend time in when I write.  I've been there."

Comments

[Erica Orloff]

I tend to picture it all like a movie. Though I think my lips sometimes move when I am writing dialogue. ;-)

But I am ever aware I go into some inner world--and when I write I communicate less with the "real life" people in my real life world, and am in an inner space of some sort. Not underwater, but akin to it.

Love the art . . .

[Chris Howard]

Thanks, Erica! I also picture it like a movie, sometimes in the POV character's head, other times, just sort of watching what's going on from the outside.

The thing I have to be most conscious of underwater is sound, that and a near lack of sense of smell. I use taste more than I normally would to make up for it, e.g., a coppery taste of blood in the water...

I, too, sometimes have the sense of barely being there when I write. I make faces, talk out loud--and if I'm not alone, I get some weird looks.