When we have sentences in our heads we
still can't be certain of being able to get them down on paper, I thought.
The sentences frighten us; first the idea frightens us, then the sentence,
then the thought that we may no longer have the ideas in our heads when we
want to write it down. Very often we write down a sentence
too early, then another too
late; what we have to do is to write it down at the
proper time, otherwise it's lost.
Thomas Bernhard, Concrete
And what's more, Rudolph, when we write other people's sentences down, we feel calm for that moment, but it's only a very brief respite.
I write down other people's sentences and send them to friends or put them up online occasionally. When I see others writing down sentence after sentence written by other people - on blogs or or Facebook - I envy their reading discipline. That having read, they type what they like and preserve it. But I worry that it might be a sickness. Running away. Writing my own sentences is also only a temporary respite but I seem to struggle through something when I write sentences of my own, even if they are sentences on the sentences of others. That struggle is lacking when I copy the sentences of others without reflecting on them and sometimes, in the hurry to copy and share, without even attending to them.
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed. This is the strange drama, I think, of writing anything.
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