Feb 2015
I’ve been chipping away at a second book.
For me, it’s a mysterious process.
There’s a fine line between imagination, creation, and just funneling bizarre stories from who knows where down onto the page. I remember being fascinated, as a twelve year old, reading stories of people finding water by walking across the land with a wishbone shaped stick, and tuning into the stick, and listening and feeling it, perhaps a little microscopic wiggle when it was time to dig the well.
And sometimes, when I’m sitting on my surfboard, way off shore, tuning into the swell as it sneaks in from the greater Pacific ocean, I feel like the surfboard between my legs does a similar dance. And when I pay attention I can decipher something outside of our normal reality.
Sitting in front of this screen, tip tap tapping away, without thinking about where my fingers need to go, just listening to them fire away, and in my periphery watching the blur of fingers. Like music being made, absentmindedly, on the old guitar… sometimes the most important moments of any writing, just kind of happen of their own accord. Absentmindedly flow down into the manuscript. And I’m not sure where that came from. And I didn’t plan for that to happen… I didn’t really have a plan.
I think other writers oftentimes have very concrete plans… or maybe they experience the same bliss and astonishment of seeing the story unfold and watching, captivated by the odd details that happen, the beauty of painting words.
dusty middleton 