Monday, April 2, 2012

how do you write?

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Not what. Not about whom. Not, 'how do you come up with ideas' or 'what inspires you' or 'what's your genre' or 'do you prefer long, multi-clause sentences or short, terse ones'. But how?

Do you use a pencil and paper? An iPad and two fingers? An old IBM Selectric with the rotating ball? A quill pen dipped in your enemy's blood?

Sometimes, I pencil any nearby scrap of paper, heat-sensitive library receipt, sticky-pad, envelope, wall; pen on eye-soothing green lined steno pads; china-marker on a large newsprint easel pad; stain water with tears. I've been known to pace or dance, declaiming, then scramble to type-and-save before I go dry. I walk for miles, stopping and repeating both the pearls I've evolved and the string of them, not much exercise other than of the little gray cells. I sing and chant and doodle and jump, I verbal-ramble into a voice-record app, I sleep, I dream.

How do you write?

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