Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Phrases are not stories
A hint of white cotton hiding in the shadows of her thighs.
I wish I could write like that. Well, I did write that, but it's just a sentence hanging in the void. There is no context. It's just an image in search of a scene in search of a story. A non sequitur longing for a sequence. An orphan dreaming of a parent's hug.
Seeing the words of an image, turning a phrase, this isn't writing. Writing is taking these bits and pieces that come your way and weaving them together to form the whole. This is where I am currently failing. The images come fast and furious. They overwhelm and some of them are good and beautiful but they are images and phrases living on virtual 3x5 cards in my mind lacking the thumbtacks and twine to give them life.
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I hear you loud and clear. I've spent my entire life with that 3x5 card. Now I just jot them down in a journal/notebook. I let them sit there, stew, and go back to them and repeat. Sometimes out of the blue one of them that I jotted down in the past will scream out at me and the rest of the words just come. It's kind of like a crafter/artist having bits and pieces of materials laying around and then BOOM! Inspiration hits and a creation is born.
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