Sunday, November 03, 2013

Knowing What I Now Know

How do I write? How do you write?
How do we write?

Been thinking a lot about this recently.

Sometimes I think creativity happens in a crevasse between large rocks, and only when you climb out of it do you realise where the sky is, what the landscape is. In the crevasse what you do makes sense, but its limited by its environment. 

And then again, I see creativity gambolling across the sky - not so much as free as a bird, but as a tree squirrel spiralling from branch to branch, ungainly perhaps, but confident enough in the trapeze act for when he lands.

But then I see it in another way, the fire ants, bit by bit joining together to create something that is beyond their individual capabilities, so each sentence alone would sink, but together, if you get the bouyancy right then you can create enough surface tension, not just to float, but to navigate across the water.

Knowing what I now know, I know how to do certain things: but I'm not sure I need to do them. As in life, you might say, so in art.

The two things: what you need to do to make the piece of writing work beyond yourself (to hone it, in other ways) and the other thing - the rough drafting of raw ideas...

The latter seems more important to me as an artist than the former. Yet it is the former that I now know, a little, how to do. Making the cobwebs hold the weight. That's where the two things join together. But am I spider or am I fly?

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