What we produce only tells a fraction of the story
Friday 15th September 2023
As I work I often visualise decorating a house. There are so many things to do in decorating and it is a task once you start you can’t really stop as it is obvious if you do.
Yet what I do is all with words. I mean there is a factory inside my head that produces the words like paints for the decorator. I feel a range of emotions as I enter each room that requires decorating. I often get stuck like the paper jammed on the photocopier. At that point, I feel frustration like pushing a door that won’t open. But like decorating you just keep going. Well, keep going until a break every 45 minutes that eases the inner machinery. Coffee is a good lubricant.
I mostly write about other people yet as I do I am aware that I am trying to internalise them. I fill my head with information about them until I have sense of them and if not enough I go back and forth in my reading to get what I refer to as ‘a grasp of them’.
It does feel like forming something and I know the stages. I keep bringing myself to the present as it can seem like too much to do. Somedays it can take me a whole day to complete. I am slow in that I check and check again in my attempt to get close. Occasionally a piece of work can take days. Those days I have to learn patience with myself as to get it right I have to take the time required.
A piece of writing is the final product yet there is so much more behind what formed the writing.
I like to think of myself as a pianist on my keyboard composing a piece of music.
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