Normally, I don’t have an audience when I write. My son sleeps, and I type. The end. Well, today, things were a bit different. I thought my husband was napping on the couch during my writing session, but, later, during lunch, I learned differently.

Our lunch chat kinda went like this:

Nick: “Why do you make those faces?”

Me: “Uh…what?”

Nick: “When you were writing. You kept making faces. Sometimes you looked like you were mad or something.”

Me: “Uh…”

Nick: “And I think you were whispering. Did you know that you were doing that? Kinda creepy.”

Uh, no. I didn’t realize I was doing that. Just call me the queen of creepiness.

But Nick’s words did get me to thinking…

The face making I can explain/understand. Today, my characters were angry–they were being attacked and they were fighting back, furious. I made the faces because I was thinking–what does angry look like? So, I made an angry face. My eyes narrowed to slits. My teeth clenched. My lips thinned. My brows lowered, pulling into a frown. As I made these gestures, I wrote them, adding to my characters’ descriptions.

I do the same thing when I’m writing about characters who are happy, sad, scared, etc. I make the face (although I haven’t realized this is what I was doing until now) and I then describe what I’m doing.

As for the whispering, well, I caught myself doing that a few times this evening as I wrote. The words are in my head, and they’re coming a bit faster than I can type…so I think they might just slip out. Soft whispers that sort of slow down the text streaming through my mind. The slow down gives my fingers time to catch up. Hmm…I suppose it’s kind of like I’m dictating to myself.

So…has anyone else ever had an audience while writing? And if so, did said audience point out any unusual behavior that you were showing? (Come on, don’t let me be alone in this weirdness!)

And, for the record…I reached page 300 before I wrote this post. Now I’m off for galley work–and I’ll try not to whisper as I do that!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 24th, 2007 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Romance. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.