Frustrate, Frustrate, Frustrate

My hands are particularly stiff and painful this morning. I think maybe that my mind is as well. Last evening I looked through some of the first posts on this site, before I began doing it regularly and with a purpose. I'm glad I'm taking the time to do this. My entries used to be maybe 70-80 words. I left out pronouns, The style was very choppy and looked awkward. While I'm not at all where I want to be, I write with more fluidity now. I don't try to avoid words just because a) I'm in a hurry and want to get on to the next thing, b) my hands hurt, c) I don't really feel like I have much to say or can't think of how to say it, or d) I have no purpose for my writing.

There may be many more reasons, but I think those are the main ones. Now, this writing is part of my morning like coffee, breakfast, brushing my teeth. The more I type, the less my hands hurt and the better my fingers move. I realize that having something to say is more about saying what's inside me, even if no one ever reads it. Writing is an end in itself for me, it unburdens me somehow and I get to watch it happen as though I'm not the one writing. The more I write, the better I keep up with my thoughts and the less arduous it is to write them down. That's something new. When I read what I've written now, I have a kind of amazement. In general, thoughts go by so quickly I never really get a chance to consider them so much as just "have" them. Reading them later, lets me see them in an entirely different light.

It may be a left brain, right brain thing. I don't know. But many times I read some piece that I've written and I don't remember much of the piece. I don't consider this a bad thing, like Alzheimers or dementia of some kind. Maybe it is, but I don't think so. It's more that my thoughts were captured instead of treated like a rapid sequence of newspaper editions. That last phrase there, before I would have never taken the time to write that, instead I would have tried to find a shorter way to say something like it. Something like, "shit", perhaps.

Being able to type faster means I can come closer to keeping up with my thinking and so I'm free to take my first choices for phrasing. As I have said before, once I'm warmed up and my brain is idling along, the act of typing is actually a very pleasant activity for me. The natural stumbling comes when I watch what I type and back up to correct every little typo that I make. Fast corrections usually lead to more typos and a cycle of correcting that takes me out of the flow and frustrates me. (The word frustrate is quite hard for me to type so I'll do it a few more times-- frustrate, frustrate, frustrate) So because corrections are such speed-bumps for me, I endeavor to not look at what I'm typing and then go back at the end or at natural break points to correct what I've written so far. In this way, my productivity goes way up at least in terms of words typed per minute because I don't have to keep restarting my thinking process.

I will stop here and correct.

It's a bit wordy but I don't mind for this exercise. Another benefit of writing as a routine is that I'm much more at ease with slashing copy while editing. Before, I seemed to consider the words I'd written as wonderful pearls that took something out of me and so I needed preserve and defend them during the editing process. Like golden eggs, the idea of just erasing an entire paragraph because it was awkward in a way that I could not easily correct, made me bypass it and then grind for a long time on ways to reform and rehabilitate it. Now I can just look at what I was trying to accomplish with the phrase, sentence, or paragraph and decide whether it was necessary or not. If it wasn't necessary in the first place, a crime I regularly commit, then I try to just hi-light and delete it. If it was necessary, then delete it and rewrite it to accomplish the end, better and more succinctly.

At least that's what I try to do. I'm afraid that I still write a lot of words just to write. I think I do the same thing with talking. But then maybe that's just me.

I want to put something else down here. It's occurred to me several times now that once in a while when writing, I seem to stumble onto the right way. A sentence comes out that looks and sounds perfect, as though I hit on the very best way to phrase the thought. I assume quite by accident, but, at least I recognize it when it happens. Now again, this could also be the symptom of some neurological disorder or condition. I need to collect these sentences as I find them and then evaluate them again later and ask someone else to evaluate them. As I've said before, there are times occasionally that, during writing, I come close to a very happy (ecstatic) state which seems very good but could also be symptomatic of something else. I have this feeling in dreams sometimes. It's akin to the story of the perfect chord. I love that concept.

I don't know about, what I just wrote. Maybe it's real and maybe not. It's awfully nice even if it's not. I also wanted to say that the feeling of stumbling onto the perfect sentence, happens more often during editing. Which, by the way, I actually am beginning to enjoy, more and more. This is significant in that, while I'm still an impatient, impatient, person. Pathologically impatient. In the past, I have abhorred editing to the point that I would finish a paper, and content that I'd done my best (remarkable work, Jack, really!), I would give it a cursory glance and put it out that way. I felt as though editing might ruin the wonderful spontaneity and inherent genius, that would allow me to point at it and say, "and look, I wrote that without even editing it". Like that would be a good thing. Looking back at some of those papers, they were full of errors, of all kinds. Even my first novel. I sent it off, rushed through the check afterward, took almost all of the editor's corrections at face value and sent it off. For some reason, even now, I think about parts of the book I despise and think, I should go back and rewrite it. But I don't. Why not? For the most part, the story isn't bad. It could be a much better book. I should rewrite it. Why don't I?

The answer is, the above, it's my golden egg, it must be preserved. If I fucked it up, then I'll just try to do better on the next one. That's really a crummy excuse. I need to rewrite it before I can get on with the second book. Even better, if I outlined the second book, I could weave needed pieces into the first one or rewrite it to make the second better. I really need to do that. That would be a worthwhile project, and it would be fun.

OK, enough for now. I'm way past warm. I'll clean this up and post it and then get on with the small story.

p.s.- I also need to stop using the word- "just". It no longer has meaning, I've ruined it for the language.

More later,