It is nearly 70 degree
this morning, the air thick with humidity, a haze overhead. We are promised heat and humidity. Bring it on! say my sore shoulders. The warmth may comfort them.
I have offered to speak to a friend's students about the value of keeping "a writer's journal." Do writers think they don't have to practice? This is good practice. Some of it will be useful later no doubt, for poem or essay; but the real benefit is practice. Repetition of the moves, "reps" as the athletes say. Try out all the tricks you know, try some new tricks you haven't used before. Content: anything that is of interest to you. Write to a level of detail that you will find useful in the future. Explain to yourself how a machine works, paint a street scene, sketch a character study, run some rush of nonsense language that sloshes in your mouth and sounds pretty. Dig with a shovel. Use binoculars or microscope. Listen so intently you can year the worms crawling beneath you. Taste the air, the grass. Smell for the skunk killed far off, dead along the roadside. What do you see and hear and taste and smell and touch in this single instant? By what principle shall you organize your information? What shall be the controlling metaphor? Who is it that is speaking in your words? To whom are the words addressed? What effect are you trying to achieve? What specific tricks are you using?
So much that we do comes undone, it is perhaps foolish to think anything is ever finished; more likely something is at a moment's rest, waiting to come sneaking back into your sack of work. We cut and cut and it's still too short.
A thrumming morning, blood in its veins, a heartbeat loud and regular as the march of time. Haze in the distance hides the distant farmsteads. The sun goes about its business, burning off the haze, boiling its pot of water for tea.
No one can have what everyone wants. Why would you even want what everyone wants?
Kia ora Tom,
Thanks for the inspiration. I picture driving along a Wisconsin road on a summer day with the windows down. Think I might go write something. Cheers!
Ka kite ano,
Robb
Posted by: Robb | June 19, 2008 at 08:36 PM
There you go, Robb - write something. It's all out there waiting to be recorded, isn't it. Thanks for paying attention to this ol' mudball as she keeps on spinning.
Posted by: Tom Montag | June 19, 2008 at 09:13 PM