One of the mysteries of writing, or indeed any art form, is the gravitation of audience. If somebody’s paying attention in a friendly way, sometimes even if they’re just in the same room, it works.

I’m musing on this Eternal Truth this afternoon after a write-in with six newfound Best Writing Buddies, some of whom I know from Ye Olde Day Jobbe and some of whom are friends of said Writing Buddies. We reserved a conference room at the public library, brought our writing implements–notebooks, laptops, Alphasmart Neos–and our headsets, and had at it like wild things. It’s called a write-in, and it’s a NaNoWriMo thing. And you would understand, because it’s just this simple:

Write. Just write. Don’t worry about whether it’s any good, just let one thing follow another. That’s what the headset and juicy music are for. It’s like distracting the toddler with a toy: my Internal Censor seems to resonate to the same frequency as the piece of my brain that wants to parse Finnish into something intelligible. So I listen to rockin’ Nordic Roots music with Finnish lyrics, and the inner demon forgets to tell me that I am a crap writer.

The company of others provides Positive Peer Pressure; the sound of their tippytapping keeps my fingers nimbly rockin’ on.

The true mystery is this: why do I write more, and more wildly, in company than alone?

And what language will silence the censor, if I ever learn Finnish?