I’ve got a blank space, baby
Hoard notebooks of notes that you never finish. Thinking about.
Scribble over words and phrases you suddenly decide that you hate. Place arrows over the page to connect the disconnected lines, that do actually connect. When you think about it.
Go back and add the line you wish you thought of in the first place.
Never complete a notebook. Start new notepads sporadically. No one will ever be able to piece together the thread that pulls all these words together when they are located in so many books.
Miss words out, you know what you mean. You always will.
Read the words out loud to yourself. Quietly. Find a new rhythm or economy to what you originally wrote. Cross out the words you no longer need.
Save some phrases for another day.
Type one
When you leave your new favourite notepad at home, tap into the notes app. People will just think you are writing an email. No one judges email writing. Emails make the world go around.
No needs to know you are actually writing a half formed line about how the sun is reflecting from that droplet of water clinging onto a cobweb. Or the words you overheard at the bus stop as you watched the droplet fall.
Tweet
Send tweets. No one ever reads them. Until they do, and then maybe you will wish you didn’t write as though it would not be read. As once it has been read, it cannot be be unread. And it will be read in the tone of eye of the beholder. An intended joke turned into a statement. A partial poem mistaken for a cry for help.
Algorithms have notoriously poor taste. They have even worse judgement.
Type two
Open up your laptop. Feel ideas evaporate briefly. Wonder why an electronic page feels blanker than a paper one. Is it? Can one blank page be blanker than another? Feel the need to start filling the space before the idea arrives.
Recall an idea from a note pad. Expand it, mould it into a more formal shape.
Start to imagine how the words may look if they were physically printed out on paper. How the words would feel and look. Control and cut. Control and paste. Look at how the words look. Never complete a sentence without deleting at least three words in the process of getting to the end.
Close your laptop as you realise that deleting becomes the biggest part of the process.
Never finish
Wake up forgetting the great idea you had before sleeping. Find a new one as you brush your teeth.
Not all the phrases that fall into your head will make it to the page. The keyboard. The screen. Certainly not all of them will be read.
But write them anyway. Because you like the feeling of finding something to say. And finding the way to say it in such a way that you may be brave enough to share it. Once it is just so and ready to let go. Once you know you will press send, submit, or share. That you could read it out loud. To others.
The sharing is where it could connect. With others. That could lead to new ideas that you will want to think about. Want to read about. Want to write about. And the joy is, that the sharing is the start of something you thought you had just finished.
Footnote: I have written this whilst suffering with covid (for the second, and unwelcome, time). This is my big Friday night in. Writing. Reading. Distracting. Resting. Thank you for reading.