STACKS OF NOTEBOOKS TEETERING a foot and a half high. Scraps of paper torn from here and there, covered in cryptic and often indecipherable scrawls: old envelopes and junk mail, stray printouts, performance programs, grocery lists flipped to the other side. In our brave new electronic age, odd passages struck by thumb and stored in the Notes app of our smart phones. Strange names and phone numbers. Possibly important dates, if only you could remember what they’re for. Vital phrases and dead ends. Whole paragraphs out of the blue, scribbled in haste before they can vanish into the mist.
Writing is a messy enterprise, a stumble toward clarity through a thicket of confusion. The writer jots down notes amid the chaos, little clues to mark a path toward a destination he can’t quite see and whose appearance, if ever he discovers it, might easily arrive as an utter surprise, not at all like whatever it was he envisioned when he set out.
It’s possible, of course, that some writer somewhere sits down to keyboard or notepad at a desk of virginal cleanness and simply composes, fresh, from brain to fingers, in a smooth spontaneous stream. I have not met this person. My own writing environment is a haphazardly orchestrated disaster zone of unfinished projects, dubious side trips, and cryptic hints of ideas that, having been jotted onto paper or screen, have joined the daunting pile of faint yet hopeful possibilities. Now, where is that thing that I wrote down three weeks ago and suddenly realize might fit into the blank spot on the page I’m working on today? What was it, again? Let me just see if I can track it down. Somehow, this organizational calamity comforts me and spurs me on. Continue reading On Writing: Shards and Scraps