Spider Sense
May 13, 2002
7:36 a.m.
Yes, rain can cramp my writing style. I don't mean rain in the sense of a warm summertime drizzle that lasts all afternoon and leaves behind the smell of earth. And I don't mean the sharp rain that comes in the spring and fall when the weather is cold to begin with. I mean the full-gale rain accompanied by salvoes of crescendoing thunder and streak lightning that sizzles through the air and makes you want to run to the window to gawk. That last is the type of rain and storm we were having last week. And in that light, my computers remained off much of the time I might have been writing. Now, don't get me wrong. That didn't mean I wasn't at least a little productive. I did edit a story in hard copy and manage to put those edits into the system between the bolts of lightning. And I managed another couple hundred words on the story I was working on. But the hard truth was that my last week's production wasn't very much. I even gave into the writing gods and played a computer game rather than actually do any writing last Saturday before we headed up to Louisville to celebrate Mother's Day (I know, how bohemian of me). This morning I got back to it, though. While I moved the word count along at a fair clip, the most important thing was that I got myself back into the story. You know--I gathered back that sensation of being one with the work. I don't know how else to say it. When you start, you are separate beings ... at least, when I start, I am a separate being from the story. The challenge is to get into its skin, to feel its characters and grab its purpose close to you. I wish I could explain it better. It's just this second skin that wraps around me, or maybe it's more like a cocoon or a web. All I know is that when this thing that is the story is there, I can reach out an instantly touch it at any point and understand something important about it. I don't know what the heck it is. Maybe it's as close to spider-sense as I can ever hope to get.   Have a great day.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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