Two Truths and a Lie

Susanna here. This week I'm in New Orleans, at the first ever Booklovers Con, enjoying the time spent with old friends and new ones.

Today I'm one of a group of authors taking part in a reader game of Two Truths and a Lie, wherein people try to guess which of the statements we make are the false ones. In preparation for the game, I had to come up with twenty truths and ten lies (I found the truths a lot harder, for some reason...), and without using any of those same ones here, I thought it might be fun to play a small game of our own here on the blog.

I'll share three of my writing habits. Tell me, which one is the lie?

1. I can only write when I have music playing in the background (preferably the playlists for my characters, which I started creating several years ago with my book The Firebird).

2. I get some of my best ideas in the bathtub.

3. I still write some scenes entirely by hand, and then re-type them into the manuscript.

Take your best guess...I'll tell you the answer tomorrow in the comment thread!

 

Comments

[Amy J]

As much as I love the music idea, and the Bon Jovi example - I'm going to guess that's the lie.

[Janice]

I'll guess the writing by hand one.

[Brenda Margriet]

Writing to music is a lie. I follow your FB page and I'm pretty sure you have playlists, but you write in silence. :) Of course, I've been wrong 17 times already on different things today, so this might be the 18th. LOL!

[Maryellen Webber]

My guess is hand writing your scenes. ☺

[Elaine DeGroot]

I'm going with getting your best ideas in the bathtub

[Teresa Broderick]

The bath tub is my choice as well.

[[email protected]]

I'm guessing that getting your ideas in the bathtub is the lie.

[Annette N]

I believe everything except the musical playlists.

[Kareni]

I believe two and three are truth.

[Quantum]

I seem to recall that in a previous blog you mentioned writing scenes by hand ... so that must be true ..... though very quaint.

Everyone gets ideas while relaxing in a hot bath ... gosh that lady has big feet! ... whether intentional or not this has to be true.

Therefore by elimination, playing background music though possibly working for some, is too distracting for most. This has to be the lie.

[Bev Baird]

I'm pretty sure you write by hand and you listen to music, so..
no to the soak in the bathtub.

[Anne Gracie]

I also write a lot of my scenes by hand — they flow better, I think. I don't much like having songs in the background, though I sometimes play medieval music, where the words, if any, are in Latin, and thus don't impinge on my consciousness. I loathe hanging around in a bathtub, so if you're anything like me, the bathtub would be the lie. However water is supposed to stimulate the imagination, so . . . Hmm. Oh, if I have to pick a lie, I'll go with the bathtub.
This was fun.

[Pamela DG]

Bathtub is the lie.

[Donna H.]

Am I missing something? What was the lie Susannah?

[Teresa Broderick]

It wasn't just me so Donna. Thought I'd missed something too.

[Margot]

Since I do not yet see your answer yes - I go with the bathtub as the lie. I love something the background rather than stillness, and I love to write by hand so bathtub would be my only lie

[Susanna Kearsley]

Hi everyone!

Apologies for the delay--I was away at a conference and the Internet there wasn't very reliable.

I'm home now, though, and can end the suspense for you...

The lie is #1.

Although it's true that I do make playlists for my novels and characters (and sometimes share songs from these on my Facebook page on Mondays), I only play the songs when I'm not writing, as a way to get the characters moving. I write in silence. Any kind of noise in the background (other than nature) distracts me, and if I'm not alone in the house I put on headphones playing white noise to block out the other sounds so I can concentrate. So, definitely NO music :)

I DO get ideas in the bathtub. Whenever I come to a difficult place in my writing, the first thing I do is to run a hot bath. An hour or so of soaking and my characters inevitably stir and start to talk, and I emerge with scribbled water-spotted pages filled with random bits of dialogue and thoughts for scenes, enough to get my story moving. Why I’m inspired in the bathtub I really don’t know, though I privately suspect that the effects of lying neck-deep in warm water with the white noise of the bathroom fan obscuring outside sound comes fairly close to the experience of lying in an isolation tank – sometimes called a ‘sensory deprivation tank’ – in which most people’s brainwaves slow to a speed known as ‘theta’, the daydreaming state that falls somewhere between relaxed ‘alpha’ and sound-asleep ‘delta’. My creative subconscious, in other words, gets time to play.

And I DO write some scenes entirely by hand. Usually because they come to me at inconvenient times, in inconvenient places, when I'm away from my computer and have to scramble to find a pen and something to write on before I lose the scene entirely...or sometimes because I'm in the bathtub (see above) and using a computer would be ill-advised...but either way, I just re-type those scenes into the manuscript and file the original paper copy away in the three-ring binder I use to hold all the bits and pieces for that particular book.

So there you are.

I think I'm off to take a bath... :)