Friday, December 10, 2004

How To Write On One Breath

How To Write On One Breath
George Rusky
November 2004

Anyone embarking on a piece of writing, sooner or later, will face a difficulty of expressing one’s thoughts.
Everything seems clear in the head as you think about it; you even try to pronounce separate passages of your future article.
All seems to work!
And yet, something happens when you sit in front of the computer, try to excavate the words from your memory and draw them together into sentences.

No, I’m not talking about a writer’s block. Block is, well, another story.

Before we go further, let me ask you this question:” Isn’t it said that we think in words and sentences? If so, why our thoughts do not smoothly go to the screen?”

Before starting writing, I was told to think intensively about what to write, jot down my writing ideas in a note pad or record on the Dictaphone so that not to lose them later. Or, at night, waking up with a start, to fix the dream’s fading images and descriptions into a note pad.

In theory, everything is O.K.
In practice, not always, especially with night night’s half asleep scrawled ‘reportage.’
In the morning, only a general impression of the dream (or nightmare) remains.
Pity.
Sometimes night dreams bring us invaluable material for writing projects.

Listen, what if we had a special ‘smart’ machine to transmit our thoughts directly onto the screen of a computer, just without hands, fingers, keyboard, desk, desk lamp, and so on?
Imagine, you sit in a comfy armchair sipping a beer and create literary pearls?
Or, you sleep, and everything is read from your brain directly to the computer, or whatever it can be?
What is more, the text is edited, corrected, prepared for publishing? All with astounding speed!
“Wow!” you say, “What a challenge! I wish I had such a virtual assistant!”

It’s not harmful to dream, after all. Besides, I’m sure that this gear will definitely come out one day.
But, on the other hand, who can guarantee that the labor of a writing man will become easier?

I’m absolutely sure, whatever tricks the twenty-first century technical progress may play to us, and whatever the mechanism of writing may be, an author will always carry a burden of responsibility for what she wrote, whether she’d done it with the top speed of a super-modern writing gear, or scribbled it with a goose-quill.

O.K. With inability to transform thoughts into the words, the responsibility for evil-writing is clear, but what do you recommend?
I’m glad, you asked.

Without further ado, here we go.

First.
Write, write, write, and then read.
Write quickly what comes out from your brain. Main point- to place on the screen the more lines you can, not to lose anything that has been stored in your memory.

Second.
When you feel that you wrote yourself out, come back to what you have written and read the text loudly.

Third.
Read the text as quickly as possible to move forward the narrative where it had been stopped.

Fourth.
Go on typing as much as you can, completely ignore green and read wavy lines which may appear on the screen.

Fifth.
As long as you’ve written as much as you think you could, it is the time to start looking critically at what you have produced.