Write. It. Down
It's 2 AM and I'm awakened by the niggling sounds of my son.
He seems to get congested with gross snotty stuff which, apparently, is normal for a baby only a few weeks old. Google says so.
As per routine, my wife administers saline drops and starts clearing his nasal passage. There's a bit of crying and tons of soothing words, afterwhich he looks up and smiles, and then falls back to sleep.
So, it's just past midnight, my wife and I are knackered, and my mind wanders to a blogpost I recently read. Trust me, any attempt at having sex at this moment will end up feeling like a warm glass of water instead of a delectable, steaming Irish coffee.
The blog post mentioned refers to being specific about what you are trying to say. If you're writing a travelling blog, you can go bonkers and speak about pretty much any subject under the sun which relates to the place you are visiting. But as an author of fiction, you can't. I won't give a LBL (line-by-line) on what the author of that post said, so go and read it for yourself.
Pondering his words, I began crafting a post that would convey my message and hopefully leave you as reader rubbing your chin while pensively staring into a pool of ideas. Like a LEGO masterpiece, one idea slotted in with the next until my creation took form. It looked brilliant. Sounded profound. And while this process developed, my baby boy calmed down, muttered some goo-goo ga-ga thing and fell asleep. My wife, bless her soul, was out within seconds.
I lay there, turning the end product a full 360 in my hand while polishing any rough edges. Done. Perfect. This will definitely win a prize, and have agents knocking on my door.
Write. It. Down.
I pulled back the covers and it felt like I had just stepped into a polar vortex. Well, not that extreme, but pretty close. Do I, or don't I? With the warmth of a fireplace on my back and a blizzard against my face, I chose to stay put. After all, my words had gelled into a sculpture worthy of a gallery, so there was no way I would forget it.
Hours later, the early morning sun crept into my room and slowly peeled my eyes open. A conversation was going on next to me, so I sat up and watched mother and son discussing their plans for the day.
"Sleep well?" my wife asked.
"I did," I answered, still musing at the little guy sporting a toothless smile. "And I have a great idea for a block post."
"Really?" she said. Now for those of you that don't know, when it comes to my writing my wife is the sugar in my coffee. The ragu that makes my pasta taste out of this world. "Tell me about it."
Excited, I opened the first drawer of my perfectly-filed memory and reached inside. Nothing. I opened another and felt around, then another, and another, and another. It wasn't there. I shifted in bed and almost leaned over the side to see whether my brainstorm had accidently fallen on the floor while I slept. Then a realisation hit me: "Oh shit! I can't find it."
Embarrassed after making such a bold statement mere minutes before, I said, "It's a bit hazy, so I'll tell you after we've had coffee.
Coffee came and coffee went, and she looked at me with a knowing smile, a raised brow, a tilted head, and all those descriptive things writers use when one character challenges another.
"It's somewhere," I said, trying to reassure myself more than her. "I'll find it."
So the prize-winning blog I had prepared only hours ago has now turned into a post of a different kind. As writers, you will all understand that this is fairly common. You start a chapter going north, and often end it in a southerly direction.
Putting ideas on the backburner is a mistake we all make, and each time it happens we vow never to do it again. But we do. Over and over. Finally admitting to my wife that the image of what I wanted to say had sunk to the bottom of the Med, she stood up and kissed me on the forehead. "You should have written it down."
Going back to when I started writing, I didn't really have the problem of forgetting because I wrote my first two books non-stop. In fact, I'd often go through a weekend of almost twenty thousand words with my only rest coming after the blood in my winestream pulled my lids shut. But during my next books, there has been a number of instances where I put a scene on a shelf - temporarily, of course, only to return and find it missing. It got so bad at one stage that I went out and bought myself an ideas book. And a dictaphone.
This morning, the first thing I'm going to do after writing this post, is to download a recording app on my phone. And then I'm going to search for that perfect little bugger hiding from me.
He seems to get congested with gross snotty stuff which, apparently, is normal for a baby only a few weeks old. Google says so.
As per routine, my wife administers saline drops and starts clearing his nasal passage. There's a bit of crying and tons of soothing words, afterwhich he looks up and smiles, and then falls back to sleep.
So, it's just past midnight, my wife and I are knackered, and my mind wanders to a blogpost I recently read. Trust me, any attempt at having sex at this moment will end up feeling like a warm glass of water instead of a delectable, steaming Irish coffee.
The blog post mentioned refers to being specific about what you are trying to say. If you're writing a travelling blog, you can go bonkers and speak about pretty much any subject under the sun which relates to the place you are visiting. But as an author of fiction, you can't. I won't give a LBL (line-by-line) on what the author of that post said, so go and read it for yourself.
Pondering his words, I began crafting a post that would convey my message and hopefully leave you as reader rubbing your chin while pensively staring into a pool of ideas. Like a LEGO masterpiece, one idea slotted in with the next until my creation took form. It looked brilliant. Sounded profound. And while this process developed, my baby boy calmed down, muttered some goo-goo ga-ga thing and fell asleep. My wife, bless her soul, was out within seconds.
I lay there, turning the end product a full 360 in my hand while polishing any rough edges. Done. Perfect. This will definitely win a prize, and have agents knocking on my door.
Write. It. Down.
I pulled back the covers and it felt like I had just stepped into a polar vortex. Well, not that extreme, but pretty close. Do I, or don't I? With the warmth of a fireplace on my back and a blizzard against my face, I chose to stay put. After all, my words had gelled into a sculpture worthy of a gallery, so there was no way I would forget it.
Hours later, the early morning sun crept into my room and slowly peeled my eyes open. A conversation was going on next to me, so I sat up and watched mother and son discussing their plans for the day.
"Sleep well?" my wife asked.
"I did," I answered, still musing at the little guy sporting a toothless smile. "And I have a great idea for a block post."
"Really?" she said. Now for those of you that don't know, when it comes to my writing my wife is the sugar in my coffee. The ragu that makes my pasta taste out of this world. "Tell me about it."
Excited, I opened the first drawer of my perfectly-filed memory and reached inside. Nothing. I opened another and felt around, then another, and another, and another. It wasn't there. I shifted in bed and almost leaned over the side to see whether my brainstorm had accidently fallen on the floor while I slept. Then a realisation hit me: "Oh shit! I can't find it."
Embarrassed after making such a bold statement mere minutes before, I said, "It's a bit hazy, so I'll tell you after we've had coffee.
Coffee came and coffee went, and she looked at me with a knowing smile, a raised brow, a tilted head, and all those descriptive things writers use when one character challenges another.
"It's somewhere," I said, trying to reassure myself more than her. "I'll find it."
So the prize-winning blog I had prepared only hours ago has now turned into a post of a different kind. As writers, you will all understand that this is fairly common. You start a chapter going north, and often end it in a southerly direction.
Putting ideas on the backburner is a mistake we all make, and each time it happens we vow never to do it again. But we do. Over and over. Finally admitting to my wife that the image of what I wanted to say had sunk to the bottom of the Med, she stood up and kissed me on the forehead. "You should have written it down."
Going back to when I started writing, I didn't really have the problem of forgetting because I wrote my first two books non-stop. In fact, I'd often go through a weekend of almost twenty thousand words with my only rest coming after the blood in my winestream pulled my lids shut. But during my next books, there has been a number of instances where I put a scene on a shelf - temporarily, of course, only to return and find it missing. It got so bad at one stage that I went out and bought myself an ideas book. And a dictaphone.
This morning, the first thing I'm going to do after writing this post, is to download a recording app on my phone. And then I'm going to search for that perfect little bugger hiding from me.
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