Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Baths

I love taking baths. Great big, steaming hot, bubbly, sweet-smelling baths. I love the way my muscles sigh and I sink into the water, the way the hair on the back of my neck rises. It's my one luxury, and one I'm unwilling to do without.

Especially at this time of year. I write in the evenings in an unheated room. I don't tend to notice how cold I've gotten until I stop and stand up, toes aching with cold, fingers stiff, shivers wracking my body. Then I plunge into the hot bath and re-discover circulation.

It makes climbing into the cold bed better too. Rather than curling into a ball and waiting for the sheets to warm around me for several minutes, I can just lie down and feel the heat radiating off me into the bedclothes. I'm sure I fall asleep much faster.

Baths also give me time to read. I lie there, cup of tea within easy reach, and read books. No e-reader for me, folks! I do occasionally fall asleep in there and baptize a library book, which is not so great, but I have a pretty good method of drying them out again without getting that terrible swollen book thing going on.

I often have my best writing ideas in the bath. I'll realize I've been staring at a page in my book for an aeon, not absorbing a word, while whole sequences of scenes and characters run riot in my head. The beginning of Taillights came to me in the bath. A huge number of short stories too. And my new WIP, The Boyfriend Plague.

Do you have an everyday activity which inspires your writing? And what kind of bath products do you like best?

4 comments:

  1. There isn't a tub in my current apartment and I sure miss my long, soothing baths. :/

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  2. Ack! I couldn't live without it! It's my number one must have item when looking for a new house. Even before gas cooking...

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  3. I LOVE baths... SO lovely. And yep, I read in there, too. But I've never stepped out of a bath with a new idea for a book. My brain sort of shuts off in the heat.

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  4. Oo, I love reading in the bath. Anytime I've had to apartment shop, finding a place with a bath tub has been a necessity.

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