Still Writing
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
Despite what might appear to be a growing infrequency in blog posts, I am still writing everyday at the same prodigious amounts as before. Much of what I’ve written the last few weeks has not been publishable. The quality has met my standards, but the pieces have either been personal or purely fictional accounts that begin well enough, then wind around on the page the way a treasure map might, and end up back at the beginning or off on their own course that is just becoming interesting when my attention wanes. I didn’t think those would be entertaining reads, though I am considering including them here in one big hodge-podge blog post. I believe I’ve done that once before and it worked well. I remember the creative sensation was like emptying my head, abandoning all the small ideas I’d kept lingering, hoping they’d turn to something more formidable, but instead wound up littering my e-mail in box. I almost write entirely now on my Blackberry and send myself occasional e-mail with chunks or full blog posts, then copy and paste them to the site through Word Press. The times I allow myself to write have moved from the early morning to the late night. Last week, there were a few times when I’d fallen asleep with the hand-held on my chest and the flashing red covering my face in small blips. Those are the best nights, when you’ve come home from a night out and the visions are still fresh. I don’t feel particularly inspired, but the words come anyway because what you’ve experienced is fresh material and given that writing is only half of the practice – the other is living – your writing feels new again. And when you are going through something that changes your viewpoint, your mind changes the way it perceives, and that adds another freshness.
And as I write this, I realize it must be nonsense to most of you. People sit down and write, don’t they? They have ideas they put to paper, don’t they, knowing every nuance and curve in the lettering before they start to tell a story? It’s not that way at all and while you might not realize it, I just broke a cardinal rule I set for myself, which is to not begin sentences with “it”. You won’t see it much in my work, but when you do, it’s a failure. It means I’ve given up on a sentence. If you could see me working – thumbing the words into life on a tiny little calculator – you would take me much less seriously. I would. You should. I’m switching to a keyboard.
