Sensory description plays a big part in my writing, mostly because I think in pictures and when I write I describe what I see. It’s always worked that way for me, and for the longest time I thought everybody’s thoughts were a series of images.

The tricky part is finding words to exactly match the pictures I see. For that to happen, I need to spend a lot of time in my story’s world, sifting through words, until I find the ones I need, then I weave them together. When I’m really concentrating, I completely block everything that’s happening in real time.

It’s all very Matrix-y, I know.  It’s exactly like plugging in.

The funny thing is that I happen to be editing a draft of my Christmas novella, which means that I’m editing this right now:

 As the sun went down the temperature dropped and the rain, which had been falling heavily all day, turned to sleet. Zachary pulled the damp edge of his hoodie across his face to shield it from the weather and hunched his shoulders against the wind. Charlie’s house was on this street, he knew it was. But nothing looked familiar and the specter of doubt that had been haunting him since he left raised its head and began to speak.

It whispered that Charlie wouldn’t remember him. It reminded him that he had nowhere else to go, and because he stole money from Darren’s mother, the police were looking for him already. It said he didn’t have a chance.

He swiped at his runny nose with the back of his sleeve before grabbing the strap of his backpack and shifted its weight to the other shoulder. A few of the things inside were wrapped in plastic, in grocery bags he’d found along the way, but most weren’t, and were now soaked with rain, adding to the weight of his pack. At least he thought to dump his school books before he left.

And on the best writing days, I come out of my coma and I’m surprised that I’m wearing shorts, that my garden needs watering (again), and that I need to pick my child up from summer camp, not school.

I think that’s what’s what makes writing magical: being able to create a world so complete that you can see, feel, and taste, smell, and touch everything in it. You can talk to the people who live there, you are a fly on the wall for all of their conversations, you know all of their secrets.  And when you emerge, you can bring back exactly the right words to describe all of it.

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