Tabula Rasa

Crazier you say?

Somehow words must write themselves. Fall effortlessly from my pen. My brain is working so fast I have no time for good handwriting. Spelling errors abound. Legibility isn’t a factor. Just random words scrawled out on the back of a strange story.

But not strange enough. I can’t let loose. The words must fit together like puzzle pieces. I crave order. Everything in its place. Words have order but I crave the madness!

Nonsense words? Ideas that don’t make sense? Maybe everything is just beginning to feel too logical. I can’t write crazy because I’m too crazy inside. Nothing strikes me as crazy anymore.

Branches sprouting from someone’s mouth as they attempt to speak?

Commonplace!

Climbing solid lightning?

Nothing weird about that!

Hearing colors. Seeing sounds. None of this is crazy. The words continue to make sense. The words themselves create order from the mess inside.

That is why I write. I crave order. I long to let go. To give someone wings. To make them fall. But it’s not about control. It’s about letting go and getting lost in the magic of storytelling. Letting the characters take their own path and the story emerges before you.




Nothing is too crazy for sense.

Writing by hand unleashes a different part of my brain. I crave order so I like the cleanness of typing. I like autocorrect.

But a blank screen is numbing. I want to look elsewhere, calling it inspiration when really it’s just distraction.

But a blank sheet of paper is full of life. Full of possibilities. Full of potential. I see words waiting to take shape. And it has an impermanence. It doesn’t have to be perfect because it can toss the paper into the recycling bin. Or not.

Sorry little paper, full of life. Full of hope! I did not mean to disparage you. Maybe I won’t toss you.

Yesterday I typed up handwritten notes. They were someone else’s notes, but I enjoyed it. Normally I don’t write by hand because it feels slow or like a waste of time. Really it’s just laziness. Not wanting to do the same work twice when I could have just written this on the computer to begin with.

Or could I?

That’s the thing. When I begin some randomly, rambly post on my computer I throw it away. I think that it’s not worthwhile. Not saying anything, so what’s the point?

It doesn’t matter whether it’s crap or not. Write the crap! So that it doesn’t infest my stories. I delete the crap before I’ve even started writing because it feels dumb. But it’s crazy useful.

So here I sit, writing by hand. Writing crap. Huzzah!