Magic words
The hardest part about an ability is the using. Many of you guys say that I write well – maybe I really do, or maybe you’re just being charitable – and that I should write more and more often. Whatever your real intentions are, I do wish I could write more; I simply lack inspiration.
Some would say that we’re surrounded by inspiration – and indeed many artists can write a song, paint a picture, or pen a poem at the drop of a hat. I recently came across Andrew Huang on Youtube – this guy is a veritable master of sounds, making reasonably good songs out of seemingly any idea that pops into his head, such as sounds of water, turning Beethoven into Dubstep, his obvious love of rap and a whole lot more besides. Heck, he even wrote a whole song based on a single asinine comment about fuzzy unicorns posted to one of his videos!
That’s not to say I have a shortage of ideas. In fact, I have A Lot Of Ideas. Thinking back on my previous output though, it occurs to me that what I’m waiting for is almost always an interesting sounding word (e.g. macabre) or turn of phrase (“Meet Me In My Reverie“) that I can latch onto, around which I can craft something. To use a horrible cliché, it’s like a pearl forming around a grain of sand, or a raindrop around a speck of dust.
I also find that having limitations helps. When I wrote “Danse Macabre” I forced myself to write solely on pen and paper, without using the computer to look up words or rhymes (truth be told, despite what I previously wrote, the real reason why I started writing that way was to try and use up as many pens and as many sheets of paper as possible because I had so many lying around). My poetry is also mostly in rhyme because it gives me a way to constrain all the possibilities inherent in language – otherwise wrangling words would be like trying to herd cats.
Back to the point, I’m just a guy who strings words together. The more I read, the more I write. So if you want me to write more just give me more things to read, including things that you write such as your posts and comments on Facebook – just please no unicorns.