Child
I decide to hand-write the new draft.
I’m getting quite distracted these days – can’t sit still too long, and my mind seems to jump around. But maybe I always was this way – as a child I used to write constantly to give those thoughts some room. The first job I had that stuck was as news sub-editor at
The Times. You had to focus or fail. Distraction did not enter my mind.
As I begin hand-writing the new draft, my thoughts slow to meet the pace. I realise that in making the first version of The Party from my notebook, I was a sub-editor: every unnecessary word sliced. I drafted for meaning. Order. Logic. But this is a story, not that kind of writing, and it won’t give up its meaning in that way.
I remember the child who sat alone listening in the silence, who wrote.
Self-portrait writing in my diary (Nan Goldin)
On the paper, I like shaping each word. It suits me. I can be emotional. If I am sad, I can write slowly, as with paint. Shaping each letter like a child who is learning to write. There is time to cry while you put the letters down. This page demands nothing, lets me be.
I use an HB pencil, which changes as you go on.
I can hear the melody and rhythm of each phrase. When
I finish I am peaceful and feel that despite the pace a lot got done.
Writing by hand connects me to the original experience as I recorded it in my notebook in Alamar. I am writing the same words, the same way I did back then.
This way I can breathe; I can move as I work. Writing is a visceral act, not an intellectual one. It is presence on the page. Nothing should come between us, no intermediary machine.
I write early in the morning, in a fluid, half-conscious state. I don’t think much about what I’m doing and the work seems to make itself. It’s like being that child again.
Tags: Cuba, Leila Segal, short stories
April 1st, 2010 at 2:44 pm
I also find writing long hand useful. Especially the first few drafts. When I get to my computer, I am definitely in edit mode. When I’m handwriting there is a fluid freedom to it. It’s meditative. It’s like listening to dictation.
April 5th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Yes, I think that’s it, Leila, writing IS a visceral act and it is the physicality that connects us to the heart, which is where the real stories and poems lie.
April 6th, 2010 at 10:44 am
The pictures that you draw with your writing are so vivid that it’s like looking at a painting at an exhibition! I can just see every stroke of the brush in my mind’s eye – wonderful!