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Friday, March 8, 2013

Rhythm and Honey of Words

"To re-create something in words is like being alive twice". -unknown.



I was inspired today but one of my favorite authors, Carolina de Robertis. She urged us writers to "...Read. It’s hard to make the time, I know, I know. But don’t skip it. That’s like a pro athlete who skips exercise. Or a chef with anorexia. Reading is the essential foundation of the love affair with language that lets you make art...".  If you read my blog regularly, you know I've already written about my own love affair with reading. I'll knock back 1-2 books a week, sometimes reading long into the night or straight through a whole weekend. 

When I read, a sequence of mystical events are initiated. The more I read, the better I write. Ideas flow freely, inspiration abounds, creativity jumps at the chance to express itself and then the urge to write is insatiable. Two choices exist, write or don't write. If I write, I am afforded the chance to scribe with the cadence that drives me and for a little while be cured of the fever. If I don't write, I am enveloped in an emotional tormented state, my ambition at war with my purpose. Eventually, as I hold my impulse at bay, my motivation wanes and the next time I feel the compulsion to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), it becomes just a little bit harder to get the words out, almost as if that were punishment from whatever forces demand the words flow.  I might as well obey or suffer the consequences, right?  

My mother says all writing is a kind of suspended mental moment. We can never go back and recreate it, we can't remember how we wrote it, and we don't know where it came fromSo you see, it would be as if I were squandering a precious gift from the gods. It is my sense of duty, my obligation to read countless books, burning the midnight oil. I take pleasure basking in the the rhythm and honey of other writers words and that my friend, makes my words all the sweeter. 



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