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Process Note

I wanted to take some time to reflect on what I'm noticing in my writing process as of late.  My habit has become, quite unintentionally, to capture my thoughts longhand in a notebook.  So, when I'm going to be writing something fresh I take out fountain pen and paper and go at it for an hour or two.  Then I close my notebook and go home.  The following day after work, I'll get situated at my neighborhood Starbucks and do a re-read.  I am often surprised at the clarity 24 hours can provide.  It's like looking at something with fresh eyes.  I can see where the story starts.  Sometimes it's right away but often there is at least a paragraph of warm up words, the chaff, the stuff you have to get out of the way in order to get to the kernel.  I can tell when I'm there because it takes on a rhythm.  It starts to flow.  It may not be perfect but there is something true there, some thread worth following. 

Fresh eyes are for the editor in me, like floss for the teeth.  They feel their way down the smooth curves of a flowing sentence and get caught in the clumsy word plaques.  They see with enhanced clarity how to smooth these sticky spots.  The mind must work in the night, finding solutions to those word plaques and place them in the wings of the mind, ready for an entrance at the errant sentence.  I experienced this "next day ease" recently and chuckled inwardly as I recalled the word fumbling of the night before. 

When I sat down to re-read and to begin fleshing out the section called Debbie, I got snagged on this sentence: It was more Thanksgiving-ish than I'd experienced since my dad had died many years before.  

This had not originated longhand in my notebook but arose spontaneously during transcription.  It was an electronic first draft and a great example of word plaque.  The problem, I have discovered, is that a single sentence can in no way convey the meaning held for me in that first Thanksgiving at Debbie's.  In this discovery I learned something important.  I learned to love the aggravating sentence.  I learned to view it as a secret message written in invisible ink by my closest ally.  It tells me to pay attention.  To come closer.  To linger.  To take the passage through the trap door under my feet.  To feel all the feels and to share the journey.

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