I Have No Words . . . And I Must Write.

Sometimes I pause and I ask myself a silent question and then I wait. A little while later I’ll get the message that “I have no words today.”

Okay.

Sometimes I sit, wanting to work but unable to start. I have so many things that I want to write and yet I’m unable to begin. Eventually I’ll realise, gently, that “I have no words today.”

Okay.

I try to remember that you can’t beat yourself up, or talk down to yourself, or attempt force it or judge it; that will just make you feel bad and make all things more difficult.

Okay . . .

Other times, still, I am sitting or walking or watching or lying down and without asking the question I receive a message. And though I can’t quite see it, I can feel something is behind it—that something is looming back there and I that know every part of it. The more I feel around, the more there is of it, the more real it is, the more I love it.

Okay!

I know now that in those moments I need to drop everything and carry that message over to the keyboard and that I must write, and when I sit down words will come out as if they had always been there—real words on the page where there once were none.

Okay!

Getting those words out is not always easy but it is usually quite simple—sitting, being patient and enjoying when things are flowing; sitting, being patient, and going easy on myself when they aren’t. And I’ve never stood up after a session of writing feeling, “Boy, I’m glad that’s over.” I always feel “Wow, look at all those words that came out—all those words, realised, where once there were none.”

And I love it.

. . .

Okay, I’ll talk to you later—I must write.

H.J.