Cult of the Firefly

The day we fail to act...

The volume of writing is enormous. So who are we to think anyone will ever care again. Or read more than ten consecutive words about any particular thing. "Do not affect a breezy manner" say Strunk and White. But why not? I'm willfully joining "the hoards of uninspired scribblers who would one day confuse spontaneity with genius". I wish I could teach that kind of breeziness, and that I was taught it.

Words and gestures like walking into the wind. Hard fought. A struggle to place one after the other. It's not the words I worry about, or even their assemblage on the page, but what they might achieve. What's the wordly activity, action on the world that makes it worth the effort? Consequences in action. Pragmatics. The continuous tussle of words in the world.

"Find a subject you care about". Kurt Vonnegut's first rule. The level of care has to be full and robust. It has to be felt, not feigned. My apprehension is usually all about whether anyone else will care as much, whether it's a thing worthy of care. That's when you have to dig in for the battle. There's a duty to make things matter. It should outshine the feeling of the need to please or to fit the mould. There is, though, a knack to finding and fitting the mood. Then the other "rules" will come in to play. "Sound like yourself". That one is most definitely my favourite.

Writing is revising. Or, writing is rehearsing, sketching, firming, revising, rendering. Somewhere along the way an idea sniffs its way through. Or I'm finally sure that it is close enough to fit the brief. Indecision is the killer of good ideas. Or it's the protector against bad ones, banal or indifferent ones. Every page makes way for the one that comes after. But it's not the map or guide.