Recently I’ve been sharing a few thoughts (all ‘terribly important’, of course 😉 ) on writing, strictly from my personal experience thereof! (AKA, feel free to treat with the proverbial grain of salt.)

Today’s ‘thought’ — or reflection — is on the importance of solitude to the writing process. My experience has been that in order to bring the colour and depth of the story in your mind — which one hopes comprises the richness of the world, the nuances of the characters, and diversity and complexity of the plot — to the page you need to minimise interference with the ‘signal.’ Solitude, or long periods of uninterrupted time, is an important way of achieving that outcome. Why long periods? Because the uninterrupted signal also needs to be sustained.

While it may be that I am alone in this reflection, I suspect otherwise — if only because both writers Kate Atkinson and Kate Mosse spoke at the 2008 Christchurch Writers’ Festival of “retreating” when writing books, and composer Jean Sibelius built his home Ainola because its “distance from the hustle and bustle of the nation’s capital gave the composer the peace that he needed for his creative endeavours.”

And then of course there’s Monet and his famous home at Giverny, although I believe financial considerations also played a significant part in his decision to live there. 😉