I write in necessity. Like taking a long awaited shit in the privacy of your own home or gulping down a cold glass of milk on an empty stomach, I find that writing is impulsive, unpredictable, and an urge that will hit me sporadically, and often indefinitely.
There is no method to the madness, only a few rules. I cannot write while someone is chatting with me. I cannot write while listening to music with words, unless it is the Grateful Dead. And, I cannot write during the day.
Often I write mid-task, while cleaning or completing homework, reading, cooking, or even while gardening. I cannot write for long intervals at a time. Two hours straight is the maximum, yet I doubt that I have ever reached that point without an excessive amount of interruption, self-imposed or not.
I despise rewriting, even though I know it is always necessary and never completed. Writing, at least my own, I feel can always be reworked, played around with. Writing, for me, is play. Often, it is in the rewriting that I will lose or choose a piece. Rereading something I have written has the potential to be quite frightful. I tend to cringe whenever I reread. I try not to.
Essentially, then, it is the cringing that is responsible for the constant separation due to interruption. I am always with intent, even though it may not appear so.
In fiction writing and now literary essay, I cannot plan ahead. I just write. I barf it out, and sometimes it works and other times it does not. This has always been a problem. I know what I want or what I want to say, but often what I do write is something entirely different. That is the magic, the gamble of writing that I so love.
And just I am taking a gamble now, I am distracted.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
