This is what it comes to sometimes, days and sometimes weeks, when I feel as if I’ve forgotten how to write. It isn’t true, I know because I can still write other things – just not the thing I want to write.
That’s the problem when you try to spin a story out of thin air. All of it is new, all of it – some of it, anyway – is in your mind, and hopefully, you can bring it to the page. But how? What are the words? What are the right words?
It’s not something you worry about much when you’re writing well. You sit down, and it comes out, more or less. It’s never perfect the first time and not even the last go at it, but mostly, you get a true sense of what you’re trying to do and the shape of it, and if not all the words are right, then some of them are. If you’re lucky, and mostly I am, there are words here and there strung together in the proper sequence and saying what you want to say. It’s something to go on with, and you do.
But there times, as I am experiencing currently, when you feel lost. In this case, I have words on a page. I know the scene I want to write, but I’ve seemingly lost the facility. I try, again and again, trying this, trying that, the stenographer for a dull brain, all of it lifeless and none of it true.
The particular issue this time is the fundamental and needful challenge of narrative. It’s joining things together and fixing them in the earth so they become lifelike and credible.
The smart thing would be to take a break. That’s what I tell myself, but I can’t. It’s like the last clue of the crossword that’s been bugging you. It’ll come to you if you let it go, but you can’t wait. It’s not just a matter of patience. You have to conquer it. And so rather than letting it go you return to it, trying to fit different words into the allotted space, to no avail and worrying about it when you should be sleeping. And going at it again when you wake, thinking your nocturnal prognostications might be onto something – but they’re not.
I haven’t forgotten how to write. I’ve forgotten how to be me. I’ve done it before. Its there. It will come again. Until then – let’s try something different…