Terminal Musings

I don’t know when it happened, perhaps sometime over the last year, but I lost sight of why I wrote.  I’ve been partially immobilized ever since; not casting around for topics, but always slightly off-balance.

It can be hard.  You know…writing.  There are so many factors to consider.

• What am I writing about?
• Do I focus on the content, or the quality of the finished piece?
• Should the piece be written in a single block of time – or spread out over multiple sessions?

Even starting with a title, something so innocuous as a title, feels like a strait-jacket.  Everything conforms to it.  Naming something, “My Day” for example, immediately limits your focus and every word you write expounds on that theme.  A title can be a limiting thing.

Multi-session pieces?  Don’t make me laugh!  Maybe it’s lack of practice, but I can’t retain an emotion, a state-of-mind over days.  Can’t go back and say “Ah!  This is what I was feeling”, pick up that thread again and run with it.  It’s not a burning “urge to write” that I refer to, no Kafka-esque period in which words flow freely.  It’s simply trying to put a handle on an emotion, something so tenuous that you instinctively know that letting go is final.

It can be very hard to accept your limitations.