A Way with Words, by Lucy Mills

I don't know about you, but it feels like the year is accelerating.  November hurtles by and I'm trying to hold lots of different things inside my head.

As I feel a bit 'brainless' at the moment - trying to do NaNoWriMo may have something to do with it - I hope you'll forgive me if I share something I wrote a few years a go (2009).  I've probably used it on my blog at some stage so again, I'm sorry for any repetition. I would probably do some stringent editing these days, but I'll let it be itself, for now, to be the churned up piece of 'feeling' it was at the time. Please don't count the adverbs; it's not at all fashionable in that regard.

It charts well my writing journey at a certain point in life.  2010 was the year when I started getting published, when I started to work on my book in earnest.  It was the year I started to call myself a writer.  

I'm glad that I did not let go of writing - or rather, that it did not let go of me...

***

I’ve lost it again. It was there, right on the tip of my tongue, but I’ve lost it. A whole cascading gallon of words, gone. They etched themselves on my mind for a moment. So fast they piled on top of each other, gleeful, eager. I was…sitting in the armchair staring at the bookcase. Washing up, spilling water down my sleeves. Wandering up the stairs, forgetful of where I was going. And then the rabble is gone – gone! Just like that, erased, vanished. I have a moment of frustrated mourning. How many stories can come and go, in a flash?

Having a way with words will not make you a good writer. The most delicious sentences are in vain, with nothing to hold them. Like a broken cup, it all spills out uselessly onto an unforgiving floor.  Trying to write them down before they are lost – one hesitation, just one, can lose it all – stopping to save a document – so very sensible, and yet so fatal. This is wonderful, I must save it – but in those few seconds it is lost again. Gone. My very first word. ‘Gone’. And it repeats over and over in my life. Gone.

It is not that I cannot think of a plot. Not precisely. They flow exuberantly through my mind – usually uninvited – but they turn sour. My initial caresses, the delight of losing myself in a tale of my own making…it is over too quickly, before I could do anything with it. My mind makes a series of adjustments. I forget the original – was it better?! That which I adored with a passion yesterday today seems pathetic, useless, even despicable. Surely not. Not entirely. Perfectionism sizzles in there with the whole torrid mix. It will not stay still. And then it is lost forever. 

Keep on pushing, straining, hoping, hurting, and then maybe you will achieve it – the grand idea the glorious tale the exorbitant march of words. But each time becomes another time where the sour taste of defeat spreads. It is like the food you adored but now cannot stand. That is how I feel about words. That is how I feel about my words. But they won’t let me go. Not entirely. I allow them vacation time and tell them not to come back if they don’t want to. But they slyly re-occur, bringing with them all their tired disappointment. 

Having a way with words will not make you a good writer. But words insist on having their way with me. Briefly, punctiliously, laugh-out-loud extravagantly – and then comes the dumping, the dispelling, the never-mind-not-today dulling. The teasing, exhausting, wooing, discouraging, miserable love affair with words. There are those that achieve some mastery. Some discipline. Some staying power.

But they will not stay with me. They never do. 

They never quite leave me alone, either.

***

 

Lucy Mills

Lucy's first book, Forgetful Heart: remembering God in a distracted world, was published in 2014 by Darton, Longman and Todd (DLT). She's written articles, poetry and prayers for various publications and is an editor at magnet magazine. www.lucy-mills.com

Lucy on Twitter: @lucymills
Lucy's Facebook page

Previous More than Writer posts:

• Know yourself (October 2015)
• When a Writer Walks Down a Wall (September 2015)
• The power of the backstory (August 2015)
• The long way round (July 2015)
• Taming the tentacles (June 2015)
• Tracing the journey (May 2015)
• Why a bit of polish matters (April 2015)