Writing Process: Writing in Tongues?

It’s just a half-realized thing. I can see it. Or feel it. That’s a better way of putting it. The thing is half obscured but there. I look the other way and pretend I’m thinking about something else. Something mundane. And then it flares out, a word or phrase or image, or just bits of those things. And so I continue to pretend to think about dinner, even think the phrase “Nothing going on here.”

It pops out, suddenly in the clear, an image, dialogue too, but’s it’s slippery and goes off again. I can’t chase the thing. I can’t think about it, not directly. I just have to sit and think about not thinking. And then it’s there, electric and brilliant, and I write.

It’s strangely intense, like I’m no longer me. I stay with it as long as I can, hammer away, even if it’s turning into nonsense, because maybe it isn’t, until it’s no longer and my brain only wants to think about dinner.

Icebergs

I am lost between beginning a new book, The Vanishing Pill, and completing The Cx Trilogy which has taken ten plus years. I am scared of both.

They both require my brain to focus and work for which it isn’t in the mood. They both demand I address the bigger issue of whether I want to do this anymore, for what purpose.

They both confront my lack of confidence and faith. They both make me realize that maybe I was not cut out for this, like so many other aspects of life.

For now, I prefer looking at the ice.