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Category: Writing

Hammer and Tongs

Hammer and Tongs

There is a story in my head that wants out and if I don’t get it out it will make me a little crazy. To avoid insanity these past couple of weeks I found myself writing, or rather, trying to write. Writing is annoying and hard, but I still do it and I’ve discovered something.

I find my writing process has more in common with a blacksmith working with iron than anything else. My ideas collect and pool together, heating up in the fires of my brain. Purifying and distilling themselves. I pour off the impurities keeping the best parts of my idea. At least, I like to think that happens. I’m sure plenty of dross sticks around. I dump it out of my head and on to the page. Hoping to mold it into a general shape. And then beat the crap out of it and try shape it and sharpen it into something presentable, getting burned, banged and bruised in the process.

Someone should have warned me. My lit and writing teachers never mentioned this. I bet it’s easier wrestling metal into submission than my jumbled thoughts. At the very least I would get a useful object out of it, instead of a random piece of writing about writing.