We Need to Have A Talk About Writing...

I have only just arrived here so I am talking to a 'you' in the past, one that may have answered this question elsewhere. However, I'm going to try to add my 'two pennorth worth'.

I was diagnosed with Parkinson's five or six years ago that has had some effect on handwriting and even moreso of late. Something I am writing at the moment needs effort to drag back on to the lines. I have always had fairly scruffy handwriting. I can usually read my own writing from when I was younger - depends how much I'd had to drink when I wrote it.

I recently started to transfer my old, 1979s works to computer in the hope of saving them to revisit occasionally. I paid somebody to type some of it but I'm not sure it helped apart from allowing me to be lazy. Shortly afterwards I started writing new stuff. Often typed from scratch but also often hand written and typed a few days later. How does this impact my creative process?

When I am typing I look at keyboard and peck. If I notice typos I cannot bear to leave them - I must go back and correct. Not the most efficient way but hey! If I am writing, by hand, the readability deteriorates as I speed up. As the ideas tend to flow faster as I write I have to watch for the point where readability has dropped below recoverability. It is unlikely I will skid past the end of readability into a part of my mind that somehow recalls my thoughts from previous session. Sometimes I'll be lucky and hit another productive thread. If I'm really lucky I might find that I can use work to create rather than pure inspiration. Works better with poetry I think.

However, that doesn't tell you how I start writing. Usually I get some sort of inspiration perhaps a few words will start playing in my head or a nice, tricky rhyme will begin a poem. Now I have to put a bit of effort in. If I have no pen or paper I could try writing in blood, never gonna happen!

So I have to sweat a little and keep the start simmering in my brain until I can write it down. Occasionally simmering like this will bring out other flavours and the work will be more developed by the time I get to write. If I get distracted my words will turn to dust and another new work will disappear. Unusual to be able to recover it and if I do a great deal of effort is required.

I wrote 'Never Parted' recently. It was inspired because of two friends losing partners. The first verse almost wrote itself. I got these phrases running around in my head:


Do not forget that,
In your heart,
There is part,
That is forever mine.

Technically I'm not sure. But it worked for me. I then had to write the rest. It came out in spurts and starts but, to my mind, it fitted. It has, unfortunately, been sent to more than half a dozen friends recently, always after a great deal of thought. It seems always to have been received well. I suspect it has also been sent, now, by others. Overall I think it took about two days to write.

Dave

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