Grapes.

I’m currently spending some time looking back over some of my writing ideas and whilst my writing time itself (albeit sporadic) is reasonably well structured however, how the ideas arrive is chaos! I have notebooks and exercise books in several places about the house, in my backpack, in my other backpack, in my camera bag and so on. When I, for some unfathomable reason, have an idea when I don’t have one to hand, I have voice notes on my phone (useful for songs) and Ulysses. Leave it 6 months to a year and I now have to work out what I’m actually looking at and listening to, is it metaphor, simile, allegory or total rubbish? I call them poem seeds and where digitised, organise them as such which is helpful. I rarely delete them because they might mean something to me later than they do now, I figure even a half-scribbled Haiku can turn into an epic with the right inspiration.

One thing I do find to be true, is that I find it easier to put pen to paper than type in the initial stages. There’s something about that locomotion, that muscle memory, that helps ideas flow. It’s like converting streams of my consciousness and subconsciousness into something physical, something I can query & probe, a thought or moment held captive on my page. Of course it can be complete nonsense, but it can also be a great way of teasing out a feeling, or the beauty/horror of a snatched moment in infinity and quite often, even if I turn it sideways I still can’t work out what I was banging on about. But herein lies the challenge – what can I make if I can’t connect my original thoughts with what I’ve written? Is it now a prompt rather than something to be incorporated or is it something to throw away?

I’ll leave you with this one, pulled from my typed Ulysses poem seeds:
“When cats panic”