Messy Mademoiselle

As someone who claims to be a writer, I know there is a process that goes into creating a story. There is inspiration, planning, doing, and publishing (to put it simply). There can be revising as another step. The inspiration isn’t a precursor to begin the process. Publishing is used vaguely as a means of showing others, perhaps leaving it on a table for someone to find, or posting it online for the world to discover. But all of this to say that it is this sacred process that creates a piece that stands apart from something like journaling or a diary. At least that’s my own definition.

These days I don’t do much writing.

I have a notes app on my smartphone. Sparks of curiosity make their way onto a note, to be expanded upon later. But that doesn’t happen. Moments of beauty are captured in words, moments of emotion. I don’t claim to be a poet so the few sentences scribbled in type, feel incomplete.

Even now as I write this, the typing starts and stops. Starts and stops. My mind is speaking in short bursts. The depth is gone.

I have a good ritual of journaling. As a meditative practice, and to clear my mind when it gets too tangled up I free-write one page to a few as a way of filing things away. But since when was too many thoughts deemed a bad thing? All of those ideas tossed into a junk drawer in my head and I can’t say I know how to recover them. For what? Peace?

I was a writer. Someone who formulated stories out of the racing thoughts that sprung up in my mind. Like a treasure hunter I would feel an intuitive hit in my body, like a map being discovered. I’d follow that feeling into the uncharted corners of my mind and piece together clues until I had everything I needed to write a story. Whatever was missing, often a critical piece like the ending, would find its way to me eventually. I trusted that the treasure was mine, it was my fate to find it. I was brave enough to pursue it.

But even this thing here. What is it? I don’t know. It’s honestly where I am right now.

I want to create something cohesive. Something that moves people, something they can relate to. I want to put into words the strange experience we are having as humans at this point in time. But I am confused and lacking focus.

The last thing I would ever do as a writer is speak directly to the reader. But I want to know. Do you get it? Do you feel what I’m feeling?