Stolen words
Inspiration can be a fleeting, fickle thing and the gossamer of words that capture it can be very fragile. It’s such a joy to have my imagination come alive in response to the things I see and experience, catalysts of stories tickling like so many greedy goldfish. But, more and more I’m beginning to wonder if I’m finally running out. Is such a thing possible? Can I possibly only have a finite set of stories, sentences, phrases, words full stop (OK, and punctuation too) inside me?
Sometimes it feels that way. Certainly it sometimes feels like I’ve said it all before. Or, felt it all before. As if I’m on an endless, repeating cycle of actions, emotions, thoughts...
...and words.
Sometimes words flow out of me like a torrent. They can fill my mind right to the brim - a whole story will take shape in moments and it’s the urgentest, urgentest thing to be able to find time and quiet to be able to pin it down, to polish it (and to check the spelling...) Because sometimes, like dreams first thing in the morning, the memory of exquisitely perfect expression can slip away. When I come to take the idea and create the vehicle for it I can only find shadows of the perfect shining words. My memory is so easily distracted and so the concepts, emotions and all those wonderful abstract things that go in to a story can fade alarmingly fast. I sometimes feel like I have to grab at them, become idea- and word-grabby.
Sometimes I know the ideas are there, but they’re hiding behind a smoke-screen of the rest of my life. You know, the life that isn’t the bit lived in my head. (Does that make sense?) The 99%, if you like, that’s involved in being a daughter, parent, friend, acquaintance, worker and rate payer. And particularly ‘worker’. I write so much for work, and now I’m also writing a - you guessed it - a work-related blog. I’m beginning to feel that my ability to be creative and inventive is being stretched to breaking point. My ability to fly on the wings of words is going to be stolen away from me.
The impulse is always to write (or, at least, create), but sometimes it’s buried very deep, and thwarted because instead of flowing, the words freeze. There are too many places for me to put these word structures now: not just my ever-present (handwritten) daily journal, but also the online places - my personal blog(s), work blog, and that’s not mentioning the myriad short-form destinations for creativity. (Flickr, Twitter, and Tumblr anyone?) My focus has become too scattered (‘divided, leaderless’). True, there’s also a large element of self-defeating going on...a very insistent little voice that says ‘you’re too tired, too busy, too this, too that’, and I listen to it. And sometimes, while the impulse is there, as constant as my heartbeat, the ideas simply aren’t. My ingenuity is paralysed.
And I’m no longer sure just how much of what I do is actually original. The photos, yes, although even there I find there’s an inevitable cyclic nature to things. But the ideas? The words? Sometimes I’m convinced I’ve written about a particular thing, using almost the identical words that I’ve managed to torture out of my unfocused/tired/over-occupied/slow brain. I just can’t remember where (or when) I might have published it.
Even this post has a very great sense of déjà vu about it. And on checking, I see that it’s only been a couple of months since I sat down and contemplated these (or a very similar) conundrums.
Perhaps it’s a case of ‘If it’s worth saying, it’s worth saying twice’? Or three or four times...until I get it right.
Sometimes it feels that way. Certainly it sometimes feels like I’ve said it all before. Or, felt it all before. As if I’m on an endless, repeating cycle of actions, emotions, thoughts...
...and words.
Sometimes words flow out of me like a torrent. They can fill my mind right to the brim - a whole story will take shape in moments and it’s the urgentest, urgentest thing to be able to find time and quiet to be able to pin it down, to polish it (and to check the spelling...) Because sometimes, like dreams first thing in the morning, the memory of exquisitely perfect expression can slip away. When I come to take the idea and create the vehicle for it I can only find shadows of the perfect shining words. My memory is so easily distracted and so the concepts, emotions and all those wonderful abstract things that go in to a story can fade alarmingly fast. I sometimes feel like I have to grab at them, become idea- and word-grabby.
Sometimes I know the ideas are there, but they’re hiding behind a smoke-screen of the rest of my life. You know, the life that isn’t the bit lived in my head. (Does that make sense?) The 99%, if you like, that’s involved in being a daughter, parent, friend, acquaintance, worker and rate payer. And particularly ‘worker’. I write so much for work, and now I’m also writing a - you guessed it - a work-related blog. I’m beginning to feel that my ability to be creative and inventive is being stretched to breaking point. My ability to fly on the wings of words is going to be stolen away from me.
The impulse is always to write (or, at least, create), but sometimes it’s buried very deep, and thwarted because instead of flowing, the words freeze. There are too many places for me to put these word structures now: not just my ever-present (handwritten) daily journal, but also the online places - my personal blog(s), work blog, and that’s not mentioning the myriad short-form destinations for creativity. (Flickr, Twitter, and Tumblr anyone?) My focus has become too scattered (‘divided, leaderless’). True, there’s also a large element of self-defeating going on...a very insistent little voice that says ‘you’re too tired, too busy, too this, too that’, and I listen to it. And sometimes, while the impulse is there, as constant as my heartbeat, the ideas simply aren’t. My ingenuity is paralysed.
And I’m no longer sure just how much of what I do is actually original. The photos, yes, although even there I find there’s an inevitable cyclic nature to things. But the ideas? The words? Sometimes I’m convinced I’ve written about a particular thing, using almost the identical words that I’ve managed to torture out of my unfocused/tired/over-occupied/slow brain. I just can’t remember where (or when) I might have published it.
Even this post has a very great sense of déjà vu about it. And on checking, I see that it’s only been a couple of months since I sat down and contemplated these (or a very similar) conundrums.
Perhaps it’s a case of ‘If it’s worth saying, it’s worth saying twice’? Or three or four times...until I get it right.