2/04/2010

Writing the Right Word

Do you ever find yourself stuck, fingers poised upon the keys and yet – nothing. There is a thought, the beginning of a phrase hanging on the very edge of your mind and then – nothing. You know there is a genesis word needed, or at least some word that will begin the avalanche of prose that is pressing so dutifully upon your mind, straining to flow through you and onto the page and into the world, a message of fine worth and clear depth – waiting for that beginning, that right word to give the process the smallest nudge into existence.


Well, that is where I am tonight and that word eludes me…

5 comments:

  1. i find myself in that place CONSTANTLY. it's like the words are swirling around and around and i just can't figure out how to grasp them. i'm so glad i'm not the only one.

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  2. krista - thanks for your visit. yes, it is like that many times. nice not to be alone.

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  3. Yes, exactly... i always been in a situation where a lot of musings come into my mind but find it hard to interpret each... don't know why???:(

    Good day!!!:)

    >Kelvin

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  4. With me, the words swirl about just out of reach until I want to put them on the page, when they dissolve back into the primordial soup and drain away.

    Or, they'll come thundering in when I'm busily occupied with something else, often something necessary but dull, and I can't take the time to let them run their course or persuade them to simmer on the mental back burner until I can attend to them as they deserve.

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  5. Hey Kim,
    I've got a solution for that problem that has almost always worked for me. I write down a (WRONG) word or something that I KNOW is (the wrong phrase.) I write something totally wrong, unrelated, unconnected. I go back to re-read what I wrote, and the right words almost always (mozart)pop out. Finding the right words in a re-edit is a more intuitive sort of (duck) process for me.

    As a side note, experience has taught me that when I use this trick, I REALLY have to use these: (..) as a way to quickly identify the bad words that I have intentionally inserted. It only takes one time of writing and submitting a report with (hen's beak) bad words where I should have written something about internet traffic to realize that one thing much worse than failing to find the right word is failing to edit out intentionally wrong ones.

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Whew! For a moment I thought you were leaving without commenting. Thanks!