“I simply put the pen to paper and it all came spilling out like a cauldron of cold, scummy bath water…”
But of course it is never that simple. Long before pen meets paper, there is hard work to be done; demons to be wrestled, pinned and then laid to rest. Faint whispers and guttural screams that WILL be heard and then, must be silenced. Or, at the very least, must be gagged.
Chants of “You cannot” or “You must not” or “If you do, we are done” will swirl inside a brain like the gray mist of an early winter fog, preventing even the most determined from even thinking of an adjective or verb to scribble.
It is not for the faint of heart, this job of first reliving, then untangling and finally recording the events of the past.
And THEN the labor of actually writing, of choosing words and forming sentences, giving birth to a sentence, a paragraph, a page and then another, can begin.
But of course it is never that simple. Long before pen meets paper, there is hard work to be done; demons to be wrestled, pinned and then laid to rest. Faint whispers and guttural screams that WILL be heard and then, must be silenced. Or, at the very least, must be gagged.
Chants of “You cannot” or “You must not” or “If you do, we are done” will swirl inside a brain like the gray mist of an early winter fog, preventing even the most determined from even thinking of an adjective or verb to scribble.
It is not for the faint of heart, this job of first reliving, then untangling and finally recording the events of the past.
And THEN the labor of actually writing, of choosing words and forming sentences, giving birth to a sentence, a paragraph, a page and then another, can begin.
