Friday, January 22, 2010

Chasing Words

Where do the words come from?


Words come to me when I have no time, when I'm under pressure, when I'm tired, when I'm locked in a plane, or trapped in an airport. They race across my mind like bitches in heat, willing to be caught but determined to make me work for it.

Words do not come to me when I clear my desk and my mind and set aside time to write. Then I have to go to them. I seek them like a dog looking for rabbits in an empty field. I work at it, poking my nose into one empty rabbit hole after another. When I'm tired, and almost out of time the words will pop up out a hole I've already looked in, right on the edge of my vision, and make me chase them with what little energy if have left.

Sometimes, when I have left the chase behind and turned my mind to real life, words will come to me in dreams, pouring themselves across my consciousness like spilt ink. To catch them I must wake swiftly and work hard and at the end it seems to me that the best of them escape to haunt me another day.

I may never write a catch enough words to write a novel but I have learnt that I will always be chasing words

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