On Writing *I preface this week’s thoughts with a little note: in the month of November I’ve been undertaking a daily writing activity. This task was originally conceived as a novel, but somewhere along the path it morphed into a long-form deep-dive in to the act of writing. I’ve challenged myself with writing 1600 words a day… on writing. So far I’m almost 35,000 words in to it and still coming out with new thoughts, so there’s something to it. I’m not entirely sure if the whole thing will be published. Does the world want to read my 50,000 word musings on writing…? Maybe…? Probably not…? Any way, if you get any joy out of reading this, I would encourage you to sign up to my very sporadic email list and I guess I’ll figure out the next steps later! Write for clarity. Write for calm. Today I’ll write for peace and stillness, dropping words one by one to the page. Like a meditative stone skipping exercise, spinning ripples out across the lake, today I’ll try to write word by word, examining each word as I pull it from my mind. Twist them, turn them, flip them over, this word smooth and this word odd and these words excitingly prolonged, stretching out this human meaning with an expansive lexicon borrowed from this human internet. This human takes his words and puts them one after another. Some words fit and flow, speed out across the page, leave ripples in their way. Some stutter, drop below the surface on their first outing, lose meaning, lose shape, lose hope in their utterance. Continue reading “On Writing”