Ideas, sparks abound; sometimes it seems like I could write all day long. I’m sure I’ve picked the proper direction at such sometimes; I’m positive then that I am a writer. But these sparks and ideas are all very much in their infant stages. I’m learning that I’ve got a lot to learn. Things don’t just flow from head to lead. The sparks fizzle more than they catch, and even when they seem to catch there are countless steps to the blazing success I dream of, countless steps past the few combusted embers I’ve managed to produce. I do like the ideas, though, while they sparkle and catch and smoke; even at these minor stages of combustion, I like what can be done with words, and I have to stop and appreciate what God allows me.
I’ve finished a rough draft of a story. It’s not great, and really it’s not very good, but I have a certain pride, a certain good feeling that I will never apologize for, because the spark has caught and filled five pages, 1,200 words. If it’s kind of an ambiguous fire, or a somewhat lifeless fire (and my story is all of these, I will be told), I will still have my good feeling and I will still thank God, because there is a flame where once was only a spark, and there was a spark where once was nothing at all.
That “certain pride,” by the way, is not just pride about what I have personally done. Maybe I don’t even have to say this, but I used the word... maybe the better word is fascination, about what I can do. Yes. God, thank you.
I will still work to improve the current story, because there is ambiguity and lifelessness and pointlessness and a lack of depth. Maybe I’ll work at it and never get it right, but that’s all right, because I’ve got other ideas after this one....
Sometimes it seems like I could write all day long —but thank you God, sometimes and always.
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And then some days I don’t feel like writing at all.
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