WRITERS NEED TO KEEP FIT AND LIMBER
(have playtime regularly and be unruly)
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Every day I
dance barefoot (socks in winter)
then
light a candle
and
put on a track of slow-ish music
and then
write by hand with a pen on paper
without stopping for twenty five minutes
allowing whatever comes to come
Sometimes, I type up fragments of this free-flow practice...
like...
Far too many
Elephants have lost their way
Mongrels run amok
Sad relics piling high, grinning too widely, brimming with questions like
What have we yet to accomplish?
She thinks these things
He thinks the same
As they link paper clips
All the projects from a lifetime of planning, of postulating
File drawers emptied, papers shredded
Far too many proposals stamped or unstamped
What was it all for?
No more than a chain of paperless clips to be strung
Outside the shuttered windows of
The Ministry for Daft Ideas
Where nothing is impossible
Far too many
Times
Monsters
Missions
Conundrums
Times without shape
Pieces of eight
Pieces in fact of paper
Fluttering across the desert
Over the cobblestones
Swirling through the halls of academia
Scrapping
Clapping
Crying out for order
For a place to rest
The handling that gives meaning
For a sheaf to become a pocket-sized handful of helpful pointers
Far too many trees
Have been felled
Tricked into the required shape
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HAVE A GO YOURSELF
WHAT'S IN A WORD?
Give full attention
to a single word
mundane, obscure, short or long
let it pop up
at random
write in non-stop burst
keep exploring
different aspects
exercise writing muscles
surrender to the flow
give permission to make no sense
be free
no need to judge
whatever comes is what comes
​
For example, here's something that poured forth for...
​
SUGAR
​
She’s in my blood, hard-boiled as seaside rock. Rainbow splinters crackling against canines. Always the risk of breaking enamel. And if your teeth survive, sticky shards bed in the grooves. Preserve us all from these sitting tenants with permanent intentions.
Sugar is her name. Not at all studious. How could she be?
Still, this girl’s sensational in the art of childcare, sure knows how to mollify the little critters, right?
“Let me be mother’s milk. Let me replace your longing with satisfaction so swell that your whole being zings with newfound vitality. Let me kiss you on those juicy lips, slide around your tongue, caress your softest places and dance within your most exuberant moments. You and me together. What a team.”
The early learning has made its mark: ice cream moments, buttons that melt on my tongue, jelly tots driving me dotty with unquenchable moreish glee, bullets of liquorice. Mmmm. This one knows how to ice the cake of life with her little presence writ large.
“Make believe.” She sings. “Never stop making believe.”
Sashaying down the High Street in chocolate leather pants, she glimmers. On her feet, a pair of wedge heels, snakeskin. On her back, a shirt of luminous pink leopard print, gorgeously spotty. On her head is a trilby, fawn. She also sports a satin bomber jacket, butterscotch. Stylish in her own trashy as hell kinda way. Sugar’s hair is what colour today? It matches her trousers, dark, silky, luxurious. Her coif, pride and joy, shapeshifts on a regular basis, leading the way for the rest to follow. She’s currently sporting a bob, sharp edges framing her face, triangulating at her nape. Her visage is heart-shaped, cute so cute, be-bop lips a-pucker. Or are her lips peek-a-boo, little bows? Take your pick and mix.
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