Tuesday 30 April 2013

Typing stutter

It is unbelievably the number of posts for this that I start but, for one reason or another, never finish. It's like when you half remember a dream, or some anecdote from your life or a scene from a movie but suddenly-in full swing of relating something, you lose it. That's it; there is no getting back on the train of thought once you've leapt off the back carriage. You can chase the train, but you'll just stumble on the tracks, realise there's no catching up, and just accept that it's gone.
In real life the conversation moves on; there's a brief moment where the speakers recognise the loss of topic but they do not mourn, someone else has a story, or an idea, or news, and you forget all about what it was you were going to say. Not so when writing. When I click onto my blogger account and enter the realm of my posts, there await me dozens marked with neat orange italics pronouncing them drafts. I like that it says draft, it makes me feel more like they are practise runs, that I'll take another swing at them, roll them around in my mind and produce them differently, hopefully better. I know in reality that they are half formed thoughts, and it annoys me because I don't want to change them or improve them I just want them back. Sadly this means that the thing I like best about writing this blog; that I log on with a thought, follow it to its conclusion and then publish it. (Occasionally reading through it for typos since I don't seem to be able to find the spell check anymore.)
Some days it doesn't work though, someone messages me, my best friend calls, my mum needs to fill me in on when she needs me to babysit, someone wants to watch the TV or I have to have dinner. The thought is lost and, like waking from a dream, the more I try to clutch at the straws of what I was doing the quicker it seems to flee my brain. I keep these half thoughts here safe online so that if it ever returns to me I can get it down. If it never returns, I just let my eyes look on it in a new way, finish it some other, less inspired day and publish it with a little less satisfaction knowing that it wasn't what it could have been if I'd got it all out at its purest.

No comments:

Post a Comment