“Whoa,” a cowork­er of mine said one day in the office. ​“Lis­ten to this tweet from @KylePlantEmoji!”

We gath­ered around her desk and she read from her phone: ​“Fun fact: some peo­ple have an inter­nal nar­ra­tive and some don’t. As in, some people’s thoughts are like sen­tences they ​‘hear,’ and some peo­ple just have abstract non­ver­bal thoughts, and have to con­scious­ly ver­bal­ize them. And most peo­ple aren’t aware of the oth­er type of person.”

“Is that actu­al­ly true?” we won­dered aloud. Most of my cowork­ers con­tin­ued, ​“How could some­one pos­si­bly think with­out using words?” — to which the rest of us, myself includ­ed, shout­ed, ​“Wait, peo­ple actu­al­ly think to them­selves in words?”

Giv­en that we’re part of the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil team, it seems nat­ur­al that — once we stopped gog­gling at each oth­er in shock — our con­ver­sa­tion turned to how our think­ing styles affect our expe­ri­ence as read­ers. I’ve always grav­i­tat­ed toward fic­tion nar­rat­ed in the third per­son, with plen­ty of visu­al detail. For the first time, I real­ized that this might be because it mir­rors my own thought process: I pic­ture a scene in my mind’s eye and then search for the words to artic­u­late it. On the oth­er hand, depic­tions of char­ac­ters think­ing to them­selves in com­plete sen­tences or blurt­ing out thoughts with­out mean­ing used to baf­fle me. It took effort to ver­bal­ize thoughts — how could some­one do that by acci­dent? Now I under­stood that these were not approx­i­ma­tions of thoughts but a raw record­ing of them.

As read­ers, we have the enor­mous priv­i­lege of see­ing the work­ings of authors’ minds when we open their books. And what about those authors? How do their think­ing styles affect the way they write sto­ries and nov­els? I asked eight of them to find out.

Moriel Roth­man-Zech­er 
 

At a recent din­ner, my sister’s friend announced that he had no mind’s eye.

“What does that mean?” we asked him.

“It means, if I close my eyes, I can’t pull up an image of my mom’s face, or a pine tree, or my child­hood bedroom.”

Around the table, all of us closed our eyes and tried to pic­ture those things.

I could, but bare­ly. Each image was fad­ed, waver­ing. That is, until I start­ed to add in words.

Aquiline nose, gray­ing curls, smil­ing mouth, anx­ious eyes.

Roots in the loamy ground, canopy in the sum­mer clouds.

Glass ani­mals arranged on a dark wood­en shelf.

There we go.

I’ve real­ized that I have a blur­ry mind’s eye, but, per­haps in com­pen­sa­tion, hyper­sen­si­tive mind’s ears. The sounds of words shep­herd my wan­der­ing thoughts — lay­er them, expand them. If I close my eyes and think ​“beach,” I can only vague­ly sum­mon up an image of sand and water and sky, like a stock pho­to­graph. But as soon as I add in words — fog, cliffs, sleeve­less shirt, tangy smoke — part of me is trans­port­ed, not to a par­tic­u­lar beach, but to an amal­gam of many dif­fer­ent beach­es, some which I’ve vis­it­ed, some only imag­ined. Now I can not only see bet­ter what is before me (turquoise depths, foam, bright shells in the dark grit), but can also sense what is behind me (a squat row of build­ings; a fam­i­ly with three small kids walk­ing out of one of them) and above me (har­ried-look­ing birds, a mil­i­tary air­plane cut­ting through the blue), and inside me (an old night­mare, a for­mer love, the feel­ing of press­ing my face into my dog’s nape).

There we go.

Dani Shapiro

When I’m between books, I walk through the world with one less lay­er of skin, a height­ened sen­si­tiv­i­ty to every­thing around me. I try to be patient, to wait for an idea to present itself. After writ­ing eleven books, I’ve learned that there’s no point in forc­ing it. When inti­ma­tions of the next book final­ly appear, it’s with a sense of absolute right­ness. I’m not hit by a sin­gle aspect of the book, but a thun­der­clap of a few seem­ing­ly dis­parate images, or pos­si­bly char­ac­ters, or a land­scape, that all seem to speak to one anoth­er. Joan Did­ion described this feel­ing as a ​“shim­mer” and I’ve always loved that, because it has an ele­ment of the mys­ti­cal to it. It’s as if the invis­i­ble becomes visible.

When this hap­pens, I open a new note­book and begin work­ing in long­hand. I find it com­fort­ing, the tac­tile nature of long­hand writ­ing — the weight of a note­book, the feel of a pen. I scrib­ble in mar­gins, cross things out, make arrows and loops, and slow­ly a shape begins to emerge. Trust­ing this shape long before one can have any sense of whether it will ulti­mate­ly work is the high-wire act.

Alle­gra Good­man 
 

One day, when my son Eli­jah was nine, I had to run out on an errand and then cir­cle back to take him to a den­tist appoint­ment. I told him we wouldn’t have much time, so he should be set to go as soon as I got back. He looked up from his read­ing and said, ​“Don’t wor­ry. I’ll be ready. I’ll have one ear lis­ten­ing to my book and one ear lis­ten­ing for the car.” I smiled at the way he described read­ing as lis­ten­ing, but I knew just what he meant. I also hear the voic­es of books — not only as a read­er, but also as a writer.

When I was start­ing out as a writer, I began my sto­ries as lit­tle plays. I lis­tened for the voice of my queru­lous char­ac­ter Rose Markowitz as she drift­ed in and out of child­hood mem­o­ries. I heard and tran­scribed the thoughts of her refined art deal­er son Hen­ry, and I rev­eled in the explo­sions of his aca­d­e­m­ic broth­er Ed. As I wrote these sto­ries, I read each install­ment aloud to my par­ents and sis­ter to check that they heard what I heard.

Lat­er, when I start­ed to write nov­els, I exper­i­ment­ed with nar­ra­tive voice. In con­trast to my satir­i­cal sto­ries, my nov­el Kaater­skill Falls takes an ele­giac tone. I heard the book in a voice of ret­ro­spect and con­so­la­tion. My most recent nov­el, Sam, is from the per­spec­tive of a young girl grow­ing up fast. The book begins when Sam is sev­en, and the open­ing line is sim­ple: ​“There is a girl, and her name is Sam.” As Sam’s thoughts become more sophis­ti­cat­ed, the nar­ra­tion becomes more complex.

I am a plan­ner and an out­lin­er, but voice is my true guide. When I begin writ­ing, I go to a qui­et place so that I can hear my char­ac­ters and nar­ra­tors. When in doubt, I stop to con­sid­er what my book is say­ing. Like my son, I bend my ear to the page and listen.

Fran­cis­co Gold­man 
 

My thoughts are usu­al­ly all over the place. When­ev­er I read inter­views I’ve giv­en, the truth of that is embar­rass­ing­ly obvi­ous. I’ve learned by now to accept that I only real­ly expe­ri­ence what peo­ple call ​“think­ing” — that is, a sense of con­cen­tra­tion and of con­trol over my mind — when I am writ­ing. For me, that has led to an enthrall­ment, an obses­sion with, a total com­mit­ment to writ­ing and to words. My fix­a­tion is not just on see­ing how the words I set down will lead to those that imme­di­ate­ly fol­low them, and so on – although that is essen­tial work. My focus is also on my intu­ition that some­thing is begin­ning to take shape, far ahead of the words I’ve set down, or buried deep beneath them. That is what pulls me forward.

The repet­i­tive work of word­smithing takes place in the body as well as the mind — which might be why, when I am on the bike or the ellip­ti­cal at the gym, words, scenes, and solu­tions to nar­ra­tive prob­lems often come to me like movie scenes. And occa­sion­al­ly, when I am deep into a nov­el, pages of writ­ten words scroll through my dreams while I’m sleep­ing. In the morn­ing, I can remem­ber a phrase or two at most, and some­times they are like mirac­u­lous gifts.

Emi­ly Bowen Cohen 
 

Recent­ly, a librar­i­an told me she encour­ages reluc­tant read­ers by ask­ing them to draw what they think a char­ac­ter looks like; putting the image down on paper inspires the read­er to con­tin­ue to think in pic­tures. This blew me away — it nev­er occurred to me that any­one reads a book with­out imag­in­ing the sto­ry like a movie. I’m a graph­ic nov­el cre­ator, and visu­al­iz­ing is essen­tial to my writ­ing process. Case in point: I could not write this piece with­out includ­ing drawings.

I’m work­ing on a new graph­ic nov­el right now. The first step in my process was to draw my pro­tag­o­nist. After many false starts, here they are:

To be sat­is­fied with my main character’s appear­ance, I have to under­stand their back sto­ry. I couldn’t grasp Kelvin’s per­son­al­i­ty until I visu­al­ized their par­ents. These are Kelvin’s parents.

Draw­ing Kelvin’s fam­i­ly made me fall in love with them. Once char­ac­ters are alive on a page, I’m pas­sion­ate about find­ing out what kind of trou­ble they might get into. I map out the path of the sto­ry like a flow chart. Then I switch around the box­es until they make sense.

I add box­es with more details, take oth­ers out, and con­tin­ue to change the order until I’m sat­is­fied read­ers can fall in love with the char­ac­ter, too.

Chloe Ben­jamin
 

My mode of think­ing is def­i­nite­ly ver­bal. I’ve always been an intense­ly nar­ra­tive- and lan­guage-based per­son; even the dia­logue in my dreams is absurd­ly detailed. When I’m think­ing about a project, my oth­er sens­es turn off. It’s easy, there­fore, to live in my head.

This obses­sive focus can be good for my work, but it hasn’t always been good for me. In a recent issue of my newslet­ter, I wrote about how chron­ic pain made me real­ize that I’d become estranged from my body, and from the full­ness of life itself.

I’ve since come to val­ue oth­er ways of being in the world, and I’ve learned how to turn my inner mono­logue off and on. Once, while tak­ing an Uber home from a writ­ing ses­sion at a cof­fee shop, the weath­er prompt­ed an idea for a piv­otal future scene. It was over­cast, with a sense of ten­sion, as though some­thing dan­ger­ous might hap­pen. I’d known that this par­tic­u­lar scene would be impor­tant, but not how I’d exe­cute it, and that atmos­phere gave me a way in; I opened my com­put­er and start­ed typ­ing. Many months lat­er, when it came time to write that scene, my notes went in vir­tu­al­ly unchanged. I was thrilled, but not sur­prised: when inspi­ra­tion is instinc­tu­al, I almost always find that it’s right.

For many years, I craved cer­tain­ty. This is part of why I love sto­ries — expla­na­tions! But writ­ing is also where I most embrace mys­tery. I think of inspi­ra­tion as a mas­sive ice­berg that forms over time: the idea is just the tip that peeks out of the water. No mat­ter how ver­bal I think I am, the murk of the sub­con­scious is deep­er than lan­guage. We only know so much about our­selves after all.

Max Gross

Vladimir Nabokov described the ini­tial inspi­ra­tion for his mas­ter­piece, Loli­ta, as a lit­tle ​“throb.” I imag­ine that’s the case for a lot of writ­ers. A sto­ry starts with some­thing small and seem­ing­ly van­ish­ing — but pow­er­ful enough to star­tle its prog­en­i­tor. If a plot, or a char­ac­ter, or an idea is tru­ly wor­thy, then it’s only a mat­ter of time before it con­sumes the author’s every wak­ing thought.

Many writ­ers start with a char­ac­ter and allow a sit­u­a­tion to grow from there — but I pre­fer to start by think­ing about an inter­est­ing sit­u­a­tion and won­der­ing what kind of per­son would find them­selves in such cir­cum­stances. As the character’s edges get sand­ed down, the plot makes its nec­es­sary accom­mo­da­tions. Soon, oth­er char­ac­ters are elbow­ing their way into the sto­ry. The out­line that I draft­ed when the first glim­mer of the idea took hold is far too out of date to be worth revising.

I remem­ber once being called obses­sive — and I sup­pose this is a put-down in ref­er­ence to ex-hus­bands or gun col­lec­tors. But as far as writ­ing goes, I real­ly don’t know anoth­er way.

Iddo Gefen

I some­times think that the real rea­son I became a writer is because it takes me a long time to fall asleep at night. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been jeal­ous of peo­ple who fall asleep with­in five min­utes; it takes me at least an hour. For years I tried to find a way to pass the time, and at some point I found myself start­ing to ask ​“what if” ques­tions about all kinds of things. What if there was a radio that read people’s minds? What if I had a dream that last­ed ten years? What if there was a com­pa­ny that could help you find the mean­ing of life? Each of these ques­tions even­tu­al­ly sparked a sto­ry in my col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, Jerusalem Beach.

I feel like my brain func­tions dif­fer­ent­ly through­out the day. In the morn­ing, my thoughts are rel­a­tive­ly clear and orga­nized, so this is the time I devote to edit­ing or rewrit­ing (although some­times I break my own rules, and I find myself writ­ing in the morn­ing, too). At night, my thoughts become loos­er, and I have more room to run wild with ideas for sto­ries. The prob­lem is that I prob­a­bly for­get some good ideas while I sleep. So who knows, maybe I already thought of an idea for a nov­el that would have won a Nobel Prize, but it got lost in the won­der­ful moment between being awake and sleeping.