Not paying attention to what I'm reading...

[elfs]

So, I was reading a story the other day on my ebook reader, a coming-out story of sorts, in which a woman is talking about her girlfriend to her mother. I came across this snippet:

It was obvious from her expression that her initial assessment of Linda did not match with Missy's description of the delightfully frenetic woman. Missy could only hope that of the two descriptions the second one, the one filled with joy and pleasure and consternation, would come to dominate. In the meantime, her words washed up against the shore of her mother's bigotry and left their pearls and shells.

I stopped for a moment and thought, damn, that was gorgeous: "wash up against the shore of her mother's bigotry and left their pearls and shells." It was the "and shells" part that really did it for me, the way it says when we talk we leave not just perfect ideas, but sometimes shattered ones, broken ones, ones that might not mean anything at all. I thought to myself, damn, why can't I write like that?

And then I remembered: Oh, yeah, I did write that. It's an unreleased Misuko and Linia story.

And now I'm wondering why I can't seem to write like that any more.

Comments

[mundens.livejournal.com]

You will. I don't believe it's something you can force though, and I think perhaps the discipline of writing can work against the creation of such things.

Not that I've written much, but some of the best stuff I feel I've written has been done in my head, perhaps while trying to catch a fragment of dream on a train, often when there is no chance of actually writing it down, and I've had to rush for a keyboard to record it before it got away. I rarely get such things when I'm sitting down to write on purpose.