Web Log

Facing the blank page

It is where it all starts. That feeling of the future stretching ahead, spaces to be filled, notes to be summoned and structures to be built. What will the tone be? The subject? That terrible gut feeling that it will be boring or nonsensical to others. I'm much more easygoing about writing music, probably because I have written more music than fiction, but possibly also because it is less literally precise. To improvise creates a work that takes as long to experience as it did to create - this is not possible with the written word. Music comes from somewhere very different, although I am sure my musical mind and my, ahem, "literary" one overlap to some degree. I have more trust in my innate ability as a musician than as a writer, and have received compliments about my music and writing. Perhaps I just need to write more...the amount of time it took me to start writing any good music brings on an overwhelming exhaustion. There is a chance, I suppose, that the music practice may have somehow set my mind on the right path for writing fiction - I have a feel for structure and timing, flow, rhythm and syntax, but I fear it may be a rather unorthodox style, where word and meaning do not necessarily co-exist. The sound and feel need to be right. The details of a text, however, are not lost in time as a stray note in a melody can be, so I should be less reckless as a writer than I am as a composer.