Ramble: Fight to Get the Words Out

I meant to give you a short story. It started like this:

“Will you still love me tomorrow?” she stretched on the bed.

“How wouldn’t I? The magic in your eyes…

And this was as far as I got. I had wild ideas about heated witchy story of long-forgotten beings and their taste for worship or more like about an android cursed with emotions. I can see both scenes fold before my eyes, yet nothing comes out. I have been struggling with words lately. Every single one tippy typed with my Lenovo keyboard screams at me, refuse to cooperate with me, and looks ugly and all wrong. I keep forcing myself to write as the story is there, and it needs its symbols for the others, but nothing seems right.

I watched a movie called Genius (2016) on Monday. It is about editor Max Perkins, Thomas Wolfe, and Hemmingway. And there was this scene where Perkins explains how Hemmingway struggles with every word he writes compared to Thomas Wolfe, whose sin is more words than is necessary. And I can’t get that image out of my head. Why are words so tricky? Is it that because they have multiple meanings? Everyone sees them differently. Or are the rules and expectations that keep them dancing out of mind into the paper? What is it?

Or is it for me the fact that words, grammar is a tool and not the end when telling stories? And now I find myself in a world where those matters. I sit here, watching out of the window, thinking that will we be able to hook on each other’s neuro systems and dream what the others dreams without pen and paper one day? Would I want that?

Now the words stopped coming out. There are a peep and sequence of and, and, and, and…

I wonder, would the music institute next to my building mind if I painted something encouraging on their roof? Something like, don’t mind the words, do go on. Maybe I could replace all the words and ideas I get stuck with gibberish to move out from the spiraling downfall? Yet, there are days when I and words are friends. When red is not red, but merlot, carmine, candy apple, a portal to a new world, a gateway drug, emotion, sensation overflow, scream, letter K. And don’t be fooled this is such a day. No, they seem to work fine on their own, but to combine them into coherence and portray meaning to readers, there is mutiny. Maybe I should write a book about sheep. But I’m sure those buggers hide behind more complex words that I can even imagine. Let’s see.

Nomadic. Not bad. Slaughter. Clearly one for a sheep horror story. Hogget. Now we are talking about that weird shit that goes to writing about sheep. A sheep up to the age one year, a bugger that is yet to be sheared. There is a story there. How about ovine, ovis, ewe, karakul, argali, mouton. The last one is perfect for a bedtime story for young sheep. I’m distracting myself… and stating the obvious, it seems. But those were easy words. How about the conjunctions, adjectives, the cursed adverbs? Words are not so easy, after all.

But maybe it is the pressure I put myself. The thought to write as beautiful as the poets do, as profoundly as the philosophers do, as funnily as the comedians do. I’m a satirist, how do they do it? Yet, what if Caroline McHugh is right, to do what I do and get over myself? I should, every one of us should write as we do, that is the only thing that we have to give to the world. And it is not such a big deal.

That is all I can say. Thank you for reading! Have a lovely day!