The Other Side of a Writer

I recently finished reading one of Roald Dahl’s books; The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More and it made me fall in love with his writings more. The first Roald Dahl book I read was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I was amazed at how he could make our imaginations travel.

In Lucky Break (How I Became a Writer), which is part of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, he described a writer he met; C.S. Forester. He wrote

………..there are two distinct sides to a writer of fiction. First, there is the side he displays to the public, that of an ordinary person like anyone else, a person who does ordinary things and speaks an ordinary language. Second, there is the secret side, which comes out in him only after he has closed the door of his workroom, and is completely alone. It is then that he slips into another world altogether, a world where his imagination takes over and he finds himself actually living in the places he is writing about at that moment. I myself, if you want to know, fall into a kind of trance, and everything around me disappears. I see only the point of my pencil moving over the paper, and quite often two hours go by as though they were a couple of seconds.

I wanted to scream at Roald Dahl and tell him YOU ARE SOOOOO RIGHT, ROALD!!!! Because what he wrote was very true. You see writers as ordinary people who wear ordinary clothes and live ordinary lives in an ordinary neighbourhood, in an ordinary house and speak an ordinary language.

But, let him be in his room alone. The room where he writes, and give him a pen and paper. He is completely in another world. Words are floating around his head, but you cannot see it.

I experience that a lot. When I get overdose of inspiration, I fall into that trance.

Any other writer who has experience that?

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