Fragments, figments, shuffled bits of memory. I keep thinking about writing. But I don’t sit down and do it. Am I percolating? Or simply slothful? I miss my interactions here. I need a swift kick in the pants. KICK! You, who write, how do you begin? Have you got an outline? An agenda? A reel tape of remembrances that you can pull from your pocket like ticker tape? Where is the adrenaline and the motivation and the inspiration when you need it?
Fragments and figments. I just wrote gifments. Hee! JPGments. Are those the snapshots of your mind in digital format?
Every day, at random intervals, I search for reasons to write. Some days I don’t even need to search. I don’t need a reason, even if nothing extraordinary happens to commemorate. Some days, it just comes. It comes, like the muse in the poem I still remember. It stands there and looks at me expectantly, and lo! I write.
Mostly what I seem to be doing these days is moving forward. Sometimes quicker, sometimes slower. It’s rather disturbing to me, oftentimes, this forward motion, when all I want is to hold still and admire something long enough to write about it in the kind of detail that will make someone else really SEE it later. After it’s gone, gone by. Forgotten. If you are lucky enough to turn your head at just the right moment, that memory you catch from the corner of your eye might crystallize into something you can write about. Peripheral cognition. Edge of retention.
Flash! Did you see? Do you remember?
Impressions and conversations. Thoughts, emotions, feelings. What happened then? What’s happening now? Perhaps there are just too many things crowding in the mental waiting room of my writing mind. Wait your turn, I exclaim to one, while another two are jostling each other in the doorway; both trying so hard to get in that neither can, nor any others. We’re all just standing here, waiting.
When the Muse comes
She doesn’t tell you to write;
She says get up for a minute,
I’ve something to show you,
stand here.
~Michael Goldman
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Willy Nilly Silly Old Birthday Wishes to sealwhiskers!