My Writing Process
However much I would like to simply think about this revelation, I have to go on, and this blank screen is lonely and needs the comfort of a sea of black words etched across it. Though, the blank screen does get picky at times, and will only accept grammatically coherent text, otherwise you’ll see some red or green lines beneath the words that it rejects. However, you can always negotiate by asking the blank screen to ignore or accept the non-coherent text into the language, as if it were assimilating a new form of patois into a culture or a trend into society. Though one should be weary of getting carried away with such a compromise; someone could accidentally mistype dark and have it corrected to darth. If that were to ever happen would the person be content with calling it a darth and stormy night, while giving George Lucas his money?
But anyway, after a U-Turn is taken from that sidetrack back to the main highway, I place my fingertips on the home keys and feel like I’m in a motel. My fingers are the occupants and they’ve just stepped into the room and they’re not quite sure if this was a good idea. So they finally begin to move around a bit, checking the bedspread and examining the television, then it’s on to the bathroom to make sure everything is sanitary. Whatever the outcome they always come right back to where they started-this is where I hold down the delete and erase everything that just came-it wasn’t that good anyway. Now I know people usually don’t think about motel rooms and how dirty they might be when they’re about to engage in fast paced fingertip pounding on an ergonomic keyboard, but I do.
We’re seven minutes and twenty three seconds in and nothing worth staying has graced this blank screen-I know! Inspiration is needed. Television is too distracting to produce inspiration; the average person’s attention span isn’t good enough to keep up with focused writing and something interesting that would appear on the boob tube, such as news or ANYTHING on the discovery channel. The radio is an option, but if you’re already on a computer why not just listen to the radio on the computer-which is not what I do. If I wanted the opinions of other people I could just sit around and read blogs until my eyes bled, so I listen to music. This is more difficult than it should be because when I engaging in the finger martial arts of literary proportions, I tend to be a certain mood which would require me to listen to a certain genre of music. That alone takes time; figuring out what genre to listen to, if any subgenres fit the mood better, and then creating a playlist.
Now, we’ve got Led Zeppelin, Queen, Pink Floyd, The Who, and Elton John playing. At least one or two songs from each and we’re roughly forty-five minutes in and we’ve got nothing on this blank screen. The paperclip’s been scratching his upper half for awhile now and one would think he’s gonna need a few eye drops before he goes another minute, but he’s a trooper, he perseveres. And then it happens! Something in Freddie Mercury’s voice sends a chill through my fingers and all the ideas that were being blocked into the back of head immediately rush forward and I’m assaulting the keyboard with my fingertips, ravaging the vowels and decimating the consonants to the sound of his voice. But this produces another problem: I’m falling in love with my words. While a vivid description of a sudden engagement between two friends is required, subjecting a reader to the powerful motifs and symbolism in sipping a glass of tea that’s too hot is not. So, the music has to be turned down and I have to slow down the felony that is being made against the keyboard.
Turns out, I didn’t need the music at all, I didn’t need to sit and stare, I didn’t need anything except to accept the fact that I am a writer and that is what my mind is programmed to do. So I delete everything off of the page and you know what I do?
I write.
