26. Creative-writing-juices-flowing

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I’m getting ready to read the 3rd chapter of the book Dad gave me: Planning. The first was Theme, the second Viewpoint. It’s really interesting, and there’s a lot to take in, so I’m reading kind of slow, underlining as I go. It’s got me thinking again, about writing and all, and I realize I’ve missed it more than I knew.

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Why did I stop anyway? At the start of my creative stint it seemed that ink oozed blackgoldfluid into a bubblingbabbling brook twinkling beneath High Summer Stars… a stream teeming with schools of words and ideas and how I managed to catch some between the lines. Black and white fully formed sentences innocent of preconception came of their own accord – as though ‘chuting’ down the conduit my arm turns into when fountain-pen's in hand - the link between the place of their origin and the empty sheet beneath pen ... somehow fell into an order of their own design upon the page. It was at times like that (in my opinion) when I did my best writing, or (if you'll allow me to say) the writing did the best me.
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And when those times came, it was the finest feeling, the biggest buzz, better than jumping 3,000 feet from a plane with a parachute on your back, or 300 feet from a crane in a screaming bungee-jump. And, with writing, when it’s all over and the deed’s done, not only do you have the memory of the experience, you also have a permanent record of it to boot.

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When it was just happening – the process of writing – happening all by itself – with no force from me – it was the closest thing to perfection, the closest I’d ever gotten to an out-of-body experience (which, by the way, I think I’m having off and on from time to time thesenights). Unwittingly, at the high point of my writing spree, I sabotaged myself by throwing a Spaniard in the works. How? By interfering with the happening… by slowing down to notice the happening - notice the way it was happening without me noticing.
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Brings to mind some graffiti I read on the bathroom wall in the Ladies room at the Driving Test Centre. 

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Notice:

By the time you’ve noticed this Notice

you’ll have noticed that this Notice

is not worth Noticing!

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The quality of the writing eventually grew thin, like water from a faucet just twisted off tight, the steady flow of ideas diminished into a drip before finally running dry. The wonderful words, like the sheep thesenights, scattered, disappearing into the foliage and underbrush. No matter I did could coax them from their hiding places.
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Writing is not, I’ve sadly come to discover, a process you want to become too fascinated by. (Or is it with? Check that.) To attempt to process the process while it is actually in process… maybe that’s not such a good idea. Perhaps it’s true that some stones are best left unturned. Some balls of yarn are best left unwound.
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But how do you know until you do...
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What fascinates me most is the way black marks upon the page, shaped by the tiniest (autonomous) inflection of fingers, capture the meaning of invisible, matterless thought and transmute it to paper. It still gets me to wondering. Is a piece of Time captured too, in the same moment - by default? The Idea frozen in Time. Time frozen in the idea. A disposable snap-shot pressed between hard covers. Safe. Sound. Snug as a bug in a rug.

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And quite dead. Only to come to life again when a pair of human eyes gaze upon it.
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By itself, without my attention, the writing went so well: then I showed up, things unplugged, unhinged, went to hell.
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When my arm and the ink and the paper and the pen became inextricably entwined all in one connected current – that’s as good as it got.

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I’m not feeling it anymore.

Goodbye, Muse

Miss you already

Stare at walls

Rub pen
Magic-lamp

Summon her back

Wayward Genie

Abandonment abounds

Whole parts
My life

Lining up on deck

Jumping ship

Losing them

Losing

It