Writing: With a Stroke of Her Pen....

Carried away to lands, imaginings and wanderings--- words envelope this enchanted writer who longs to express those feelings and ideas and beliefs that may otherwise lie dormant.

Tiny words, simple and unpretentious, and not-so tiny words flow onto the screen, the notepad, the journal pages, giving voice to her longings.

Seated on the window seat, gazing occasionally out into the darkness of the evening, she patiently awaits the flow of ideas to continue.

Just within her view is one of her flowerbeds that never fail to offer food for her thoughts.

She has been in this place more times than she can count. It is a place of solitude, comforting and reassuring, away from that which would distract her from composing a new piece to share with others.

With a flourish and a few strokes of her pen, the new ideas birth themselves and take on a new life of their own.

She must allow it to occur so she simply steps out of the way and lets the magic begin. After all..she is merely the vessel...the words, alas, shape the images and bring life to the page.

Each book she reads is filled from the book jacket to the cover page to the very last entry on the last page which may be an addendum or index with intriguing, tantalizing, and sometimes confrontational...words, words, words.

A seemingly endless stream of them have fallen into her view.

For her this profusion of words keeps her mind in constant flux.

What to do with them???

Constantly calling out to her even when she is reading the works of others, these impatient words await their turn on the page.

That causes her to wonder how these same words can be used time and time again in the creation of a totally new piece into which a breath of fresh air has been breathed.

Jose Saramago has said so beautifully what I have been stumbling around so clumisly trying to say. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998.

It was as if, in finding this, I found he is inside my head.

He would understand what I have tried to say: it is a wondrous, transfixing experience to explore the possibilities of words and where they take us each time we take the time to explore new ways to combine them in our speaking and writing.

By reading some of these statements of it is easy to understand why he received the Nobel Prize....

A few quotes that reveal some of the secret to his talent...

• Inside us there is something that has no name, that is what we are.
• I think we are blind. Blind people who can see, but do not see.
• I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it.

And then I ask myself:

What are you searching for hidden in among these resplendent words cascading down through the gray matter of my head bone?

Answers?

Affirmations?

Food for my soul?

Laughter?

Information?

Inspiration?

Comfort?

For that matter, what are you trying to say??

• To apologize
• To soothe the raw edges
• To uplift
• To offer hope
• To remind someone that she is much more than she believes she is
• To share words of encouragement
• To amuse
• To entertain
• To challenge

That little ditty I learned as a child:

"Sticks and stones can break your bones but words cannot never hurt you" got it wrong.

Brittle, sharp biting words may pierce the soul as surely as if a machete were wielded.

Hate-filled destructive words flow forth destroying whatever sense of self-worth the individual may have.

Turning a lovely person into a despondent, hopeless person who, to that point, has always felt comfortable within her own skin can be accomplished with a few, well-chosen crushing critical words that are hurled thoughtlessly at her.

O, the power of some words to hurt with a searing pain unlike others

These words are often very small words that embody a meaning far greater than their size.

"NO, I do not love you."

"I am so sorry but...."

"We did everything we could."

"There was an accident and ..."

Short and concise messages aimed right at our heart bringing news no one wants to hear.

On the flip-side are words that bring joy and comfort and that make our hearts sing.

"It's a boy!!"

"I love you, Nini!"

"I got an A!"

"I'm getting married!!"

"We won!!!"

"She's going to be okay."

"I'm here for you."

"Anything you need just let me know."

Sorrowful exchanges ....

of loss

of disappointment

of love lost

love unrequited

bereft and sometimes alone in a desert of sorrow

the words expressing a longing for what might have been, at times, can be found.

With a flourish of the pen, springs an avalanche of ideas, thoughts and beliefs, woven into a delicate tapestry connecting each new element into a complex pattern left untold until now.

With no direction, each new word appears on the stage, takes its appointed space, standing ready to be acknowledged and hopefully not to be found in need of improvement.

Settled into a comfortable place the new members of this piece calmly arrange and rearrange themselves after close introspection in order to insure the finished work will be the most expressive arrangement possible.

The darkness settles all around her now as the wee late hours of night envelope her and she begins to become weary.

Laying her pen aside, she snuggles into the pillows in the corner of her window seat to doze for a while.

Her resting time is filled with wonderfully delicious dreams which carry her away into more spectacular arenas that will, upon awaking, become new fodder for her writing.

Too soon, the sun's rays awaken her. The rumblings and ramblings of those very same words that eagerly fell onto the page the night before now call out to her...

We have done our part. We have come and arranged ourselves just so...

Now, does this meet with your approval?

Do we need to be strategically moved as in a game of chess?

Would this word or that word be better in a new location? Or, perhaps eliminated altogether?

With a flourish of a pen, whole lines of words disappear.

Gone, deleted, removed, to be forever forgotten.

Broad dark strokes of ink slice through what once were carefully chosen words.

No longer do the voices of those words resonate. No longer do they hold their heads proudly above the others who have not met an untimely demise.

No longer will the meaning established early on be quite the same...the nuances of the wording will shift to a gentler tone, staving off hurt and sadness, perhaps.

These newly chosen expeditiously selected terms will carry new meaning, new weight as the composition continues.

She settles back once again into the soft, down pillows, clasping her laced fingers behind her head and considers these new changes.

It is much more fun when all of the writing is done for me by the words as they spill in a flourish onto the page, she thinks.

Taking the time to consider and assess what lies before her, selecting more important, expressive words comes without undue agonizing is possible.

Sentences take on new shapes with only the slightest flourish of her pen and new life is breathed into the passages that lie before her.

She finds herself thinking, considering what has been composed.

"When I began, I was not sure how the writing for these few days would unfold. Each new time is a journey," she thought.

A journey into self-discovery and exploration of the power that words possess is what emerged.

New moments to allow seemingly unrelated terms to come to rest side by side happened after hours of pondering and seeking.

This has been a new opportunity to open areas of her mind to the unlimited possibilities that await as each part of speech bumps into another on its way to becoming the star of the new piece.

What fun it is to allow this to happen....

And satisfying too is to take a hard look at what lands on the page and decide how to use each phrase or punctuation mark that has found its way into being during this process.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1998/saramago-bio.html