What happens mostly when I’m working on something is that my mind goes ahead of me. While I’m working in the present, there’s a part of me looking towards what comes next. As I go about my daily business, riding the train, lying in a bath or preparing the night’s meal, that part is sorting through options and assessing the best way forward. It’s hardly conscious, though occasionally something will bob up in the middle of all this. And, generally, by the time I sit down again to work, whatever it is my mind has come up with will be there for me to draw upon.
It’s a comforting process. The blank page is never completely blank when there’s something ripe in your mind. It seems more valid than sitting down and telling myself to ‘be creative’. I think when you force it upon yourself, it comes out feeling forced on the page. I have faith in this subterranean process because – though I don’t understand it completely – it feels organic to what I’m doing. It is born, if that’s the word, from where I’m at, what’s come before, and where I want to get to. It knows better than I do.
There are times it doesn’t work like that. I had that situation yesterday. I’ve had a busy week and a lot to think about outside my writing. That part of my mind that might otherwise have been quietly working away at the story was occupied with more mundane demands. And so when I sat down to work, there was nothing to work with. I knew which way I wanted the story to go, but I didn’t have the words or the hooks to take me there.
I wrote something nonetheless. I knew the inspiration was missing, so I concentrated on pure narrative. A lot of writing is the things in between, so it wasn’t a wasted effort, and I knew it would come to me. And, always, it is better to write something than nothing.
I left it, and this time, part of my mind was on the job. I watched an interesting movie. I read from a book full of vivid prose and another that conjectured a clever storyline. I drank coffee, did housework, and walked the dog and throughout, I’m half aware that something is going on in the background, but I don’t push it. Let it bubble and seethe.
I came to the job today, and there it was. I didn’t have all the words, but I had the tenor of them. And there were fragments, images and snippets of prose that had come to the forefront. They meant little by themselves and little even in themselves – just small things, seemingly – but as I wrote, these were the fragments the story formed around. Somehow, they represented meaning. I knew them even if I couldn’t explain them.
I’m writing this now after having laid down about a thousand words this morning. I feel on a roll and will probably go with it again later this afternoon while it’s still full in me.
This, of course, is a very satisfying feeling, and I wanted to share it. This is what it feels like sometimes. Sometimes, it feels like a terrible chore. Sometimes, you doubt everything. But sometimes, it is like this, and all is forgiven.
And what were the fragments? I’ll share with you, though they’ll likely make no more sense to you than they will to me on any other day.
There was a phrase about the day remade.
And an image of the protagonist carefully laying his suit jacket on the back seat of his car.
And a snippet of dialogue that set me off on this pathway: “The colours were different, then.”