Raw

Unedited and unrated. Not rehearsed, not planned, not thought through. It just happened and I let it go. It was pure, it was real, it was raw.

I got home the other night from an event and I wanted to just take a few notes about it, just so I didn’t forget the essence of the evening. It was a momentous occasion. Maybe had I stuck to pen and paper, I wouldn’t have continued, but I “just for a minute” opened up the laptop and started wherever it was going to start. Just a few notes flowed into a story of the night, the events, the emotions that I couldn’t seem to get a hold of. As I wrote, it came faster and faster, it just poured out of me.

“Poured out of me.” For a writer, this is bliss. It doesn’t happen often.

I couldn’t have stopped had I wanted to. But I didn’t want to. I had to get it out, I had to get it down on paper or I’d forget (I did), it wouldn’t be as clear in the morning (it’s not). At least the essentials, some bullet points. But passion doesn’t really work in bullet points. It doesn’t have sharp edges like stairs. It flows. It’s not really a little trickle, it’s the proverbial river. I wasn’t going to be the one to put a stop to it. I was pretty thrilled it was flowing at all. It’s been a drought over here for years.

How did this happen? How did it start. For one, I opened up the laptop. “Just a few quick notes,” I thought. But why then? I haven’t been taking “just a few notes” in years. How did it come back?

I’m getting in shape. I’m getting in writing shape.

I’ve been on a challenge this month, an experiment, to Write Every Day. This is what happens. I don’t write at night, I barely can get anything done past 3 in the afternoon. But it’s on my mind. I know I’ll have to do it at some point in the next 24 hours, so why not at least take a few notes. Usually, that works just fine: a few bullets for the next day, maybe flesh it out in the morning. But the evening was, sorry, I’m not a fan of this word, but it is what it is: enchanting. I was sitting at the feet of a princess. I needed to get that image onto the page. For whom? For me? For her? For my experiment? It didn’t matter, I needed to get it out and if it’s the experiment that’s going to make it happen, I’ll take it. But I’ve been doing it now for 17 days. I’m practiced, I’m used to it, it’s, gulp, becoming a habit. I’m also “in shape.” Just like running: after a few weeks, it gets easier. You can go farther, faster, with less effort. Imagine. Simple, right? Yes, it is.