Confession: I talk to myself. Most of the time I do this while I’m alone, keeping my voice to a bare whisper in order to avoid being deemed insane by potential eavesdroppers. Sometimes, though, I slip up and start talking while I’m walking down a crowded sidewalk or driving in my car. This is not so alarming these days since all kinds of folks can be spotted seemingly chatting away to no one in particular thanks to bluetooth headsets and micro-sized cell phones, but I’ve been carrying on one-sided conversations since well before technology made it cool.
It's not that I'm crazy (probably) or that I hear voices, but I find that saying something aloud helps me to measure its worth. This is particularly true with my writing. An idea that seems great in my mind will often fall apart completely when given voice. Likewise, a sentence that seems just fine on the page can become a garbled mess in my mouth, a sure sign that it doesn't work. I often work out sections of dialogue by actually having a conversation with myself. I find it's most effective to do this while busy with something else. If I'm physically engaged in a mundane task (running, baking bread, pushing a grocery cart), then my mind and my mouth are free to focus on the rhythms of my characters' speech.
Let me tell you it can be quite embarrassing to look up and realize that someone has been watching you converse with yourself, particularly if it's someone you know. Who cares what strangers think, right? Well, I do. I wish I didn't, but the truth is that there is a woman at my library who talks to herself nonstop. She says more to herself in an hour than I sometimes say in actual conversation with other people over the course of a week. I have mentioned her in an amused, derogatory way to a number of people, as if I'm so above it all. But how are my occasional solo mutterings any different? Maybe she is working out a tough scene in her own novel, or just a vexing personal problem. Shame on me for being judgmental.
This need to say things aloud is one reason that I don't write well in public places. The potential for embarrassment is too high. I can work on a first draft in a coffee shop or in the aforementioned library, but once I get down to the hard work of revising, of honing sentences and working out scenes, I opt for solitude. I will read a paragraph aloud twenty times, each time changing a word or rearranging the sentences just a smidge. I even talk in my sleep, and I can't count the number of times I've woken up with the solution to my vexing plot problem all figured out. It's a moment that makes me like my brain quite a lot. How clever it is to work things out while I'm sleeping.
Anyway, if you see my lips moving for no apparent reason, rest assured that I probably am talking to myself or, more likely, talking to one of my characters. Feel free to think I'm a little nuts. It's probably true.
