Word play

What I love about reading is what I love about writing too. The ability to give shape and substance to something as slippery as a feeling – to record those passing thoughts that might normally get lost in the swamp of everyday living. The disparate bunch of writers I love have one thing in common – amidst tales of other lives in other places there hide moments of stinging recognition. Those things you half-think, or don’t fully realise are passing through your head, right there on the page. Someone else’s honesty enabling you to own your own feelings. That’s the power of good writing – name it and it’s yours. Instead of being ruled by an intangible tangle of emotions, you’re the one calling the shots. A feeling flying round your head can only be grasped at. A word on a page can be picked up, it’s weight tested in your hand before you decide to embrace or reject it. 

Pretentious musings, part 1

I’m not a natural writer. It doesn’t flow from my fingertips. It doesn’t spill onto the page. Instead it drips. If I’m lucky. Not the big fat drops of life-giving rain, but the uneven late-night drip of a leaky tap. Out of rhythm, out of time, disjointed and incoherent. So here’s something I wrote a year or so ago. As usual, I thought it was the beginning of a story but it turned out to be the end of something else… 

Words can’t be taken back – they hang in the air and slice at you, over and over. The sharpest ones never go away – they strike out when you’re least expecting it, triumphantly licking at old wounds. “I didn’t mean it.” It doesn’t matter, it was said – it hurt and it will hurt again. Her memory could sometimes be hazy, but she never forgot words. She couldn’t blame him though; she manhandled language just as dangerously. She radiated uncertainty – tripping over the right words, she stuttered the wrong ones instead. The anxiety pricked at his mood, turning him away from her. They went round in circles. She panicked, he repelled. Long silences that would see him relax only left her more uptight. She wondered what she was clinging on to. She wanted resolve to every black mark, to every dark mood, to every cross exchange. She couldn’t just leave things. He needed to be left. Where did that leave them?