I spent a few hours today working on a new chapter…
The images are there already. Those have been swirling about in that whirlpool known as my mind for some time now. The ideas are all there too–all present and correct. I can see the characters, hear them. As well as smell the sea and the harbour about them.
Yet when it came to it, today, the words were playing hard to get. And obviously are in want of wooing.
Because it’s not just a matter of plonking the easiest down on the page. It’s finding the words that convey the poetry of the language too and the poetry of the images as well, the rhythms of the land and wind and sea, so that a visual music is created for the reader, one that will play inside their head. And which will take him or her not just directly into that place (so crisply outlined in my mind), but with a closing of the eyes, it all will be perfectly vivid, but also which will take them into the hearts of the characters…
I should mention that I’ve also been having this trouble with my sonnets as well. I’ve got a couple of fine opening quatrains on the go, but then nothing, zip, zilch…
So I’m thinking at this point that perhaps I ought to change my methods. Hence, does anyone know what words prefer–Dinner with champagne? Roses? Chocolates? A day out to the seaside?–in order that they will again fall onto the page for me and seduce you?