The other reason I’ve been avoiding posting so often has been that it just takes so long. I sat down around 2:00 to write last night, mostly because I couldn’t sleep and I had been gotten on to for not writing, so why not? I typed out the first thing that came to mind, just some stuff that I’d been thinking about. I typed straight through it. I didn’t edit anything. I didn’t correct anything. I went back and fixed two capitalization problems and a typo. It was 5:30 when I got done.
It’s not that I’m a slow typist, but it takes me that long when I’m trying to say something very clear. I want to pick exactly the right word and exactly the right metaphor.
When I was being home schooled, and working on my writing, my mom handed me a book by a lady—I don’t remember her name, but the book was called, Writing down the bones. I’ve found out since then that it’s pretty much the writer’s textbook everywhere in the world. She only had one premise: that we spend too much time internally editing ourselves to make it sound right. The result is that we never get anything said because we’ve already decided that what we have to say is pretty darn stupid.
Her solution was to encourage people to journal for 20 minutes or so a day. Pure stream of consciousness. The words go into your head and onto the paper. After 20 minutes, if you think you have something in there that’s worth using it, then you can pop out your superior editing skills and chop away until you have a good finished product. Good call, huh? It’s usually best for a sculptor to start out with too much material than with too little. Too little and you end up with all those Grecian statues without heads and arms J
I try. I really do. I did better when I was a kid. And if I completely unplug my brain, sometimes I can manage to write as fast as I’m thinking. But I ain’t too good at it.
Like right now? No problem. I think something and it comes out. All conversational like. But when I’m trying to say something that makes sense… Ew! By the time I get done thinking it through, I forgot how it started. So I end up with a lot of starts and stops as I have to re-process everything I already had down 15 minutes ago. I out-pace my little fingers.
It’s probably a really funny sight. I’m sure I look all studious when it happens. I’ll get to a certain point in my argument and then I’ll make some hyper jump out to left field somewhere. And then I have to figure out how on earth I got from point A to point B. So I get all excited, and I jump up and pace the room, figuring out all the little details of my new idea. Of course, once I’ve figured out all the nuances and implications… I’ve been standing up and pacing instead of writing. So now I have to sit down and type it out. Only I already forgot what it was I thought. So I have to do it all over again.
And that’s my revelation for the day. I’m going to bed now.
KB
neumatikos 
interesting thoughts, thank you for sharing.
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