I honestly cannot keep up with my own mind. It is beyond fucking FRUSTRATING. I will write an entire song in five minutes in my head and sit down at the computer to pound that shit out and it is inexplicably GONE. I mean like gone-zo. No recapturing even a piece of it. I think that is what I liked about actually writing shit down with a writing utensil and something to put it on. I used to write on matchbook covers, wrappers from soda bottles, coupons, napkins, train tickets, you name it. But I didn't lose it...it was still recoverable. Know why? It's not the fucking Internet - Or Word for Office. Or any kind of "hold that thought" piece of technology. You made do when the thought grabbed you "in my day"... ya know? I think I am a far worse writer because of the computer generation and infiltration. When I started college as a writer computers were all DOS based. They couldn't convince you to hold a thought. No "real" writer "holds a thought" do they?
I started a novel once - and then I had kids. Ha that's how we'll tell it for years to come. I still have those pieces of madly written out prose.
That is why I think I must keep my trunks of overstuffed past.
I am afraid of forgetting it.
Zorg: "I don't see what writing has to do with demolition."
Betty: "I'm not surprised."
I started a novel once - and then I had kids. Ha that's how we'll tell it for years to come. I still have those pieces of madly written out prose.
That is why I think I must keep my trunks of overstuffed past.
I am afraid of forgetting it.
Zorg: "I don't see what writing has to do with demolition."
Betty: "I'm not surprised."
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As for remembering something, well... the ugly truth is I've slept since then.
I know what you mean on so many levels. The writing on scraps. The whittling away of our mental faculties that dependence upon computers has wrought. The trunks of memories not wanting to be forgotten. I have those trunks, too. Full of letters and poems and scraps... and every journal I've ever kept, beginning in adolescence. Sometimes I even go back and read them all as a retrospective. It is ever a learning process.
I humbly suggest you get yourself one of those handsome little Moleskine pocket sized notebooks and carry it everywhere... and write that shit down as it pops in your head!
Also, have you heard of NaNoWriMo? I didn't do it last year, but the year before I did it and finally got the novel out of me that had been incubating for more than a decade. It was an amazing catharsis. I highly recommend it. The 30-day timeline really ups the ante and pushes us to just get that shit OUT... and worry about editing it later. Of course, I've yet to edit my novel. Or even read it. But I got it out of my head, which was a wonderful release.