I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.
– Flannery O’Conner
Up until recently I’d not read much, if any, of Flannery O’Conner’s works.
But, in my endeavor to be a southern author, and to follow the advice of the successful authors who say you must read, read, read, I recently picked up my wife’s copy of The Complete Works of Flannery O’Conner. It’s a series of short stories.
I’m not quite sure yet what I think of her style. It is certainly…unique.
To be quite honest, I made it through the first couple of stories and asked myself “what the heck did I just read?”
I’m not trying to be Flannery O’Conner.
But I get the point of what she was saying.
I studied speech in college but I never quite mastered the extemporaneous presentation. Give me a written speech or a script. I can either read it (so that you can’t tell I’m reading), or memorize my lines.
I’m doomed with a set of note cards.
But put me down at a keyboard and I could write all day. The words just seem to come easier that way.
There’s no guarantee that I’d be willing to let you read them at first glance. But at least they’re there.
And there’s no deer in the headlights look when I don’t know what to say.
I may have given the wrong impression around here lately that I’m not writing because the script and novel aren’t finished.
Not exactly true.
Yes, as I said yesterday I have procrastinated on those projects. But I’ve been writing. Either here, or on the return of Historic Occasions. Or in my daily writing project.
And I write a good bit on my day job as well.
So, the words are being put together.
The things I write about here are mostly things that are currently on my mind, or that I’ve been thinking about
recently.
True, sometimes I pull the whole post out of thin air, or elsewhere, but this is a family show.
Here’s the bottom line, so to speak.
Regardless of the project, I have to keep putting words together. I have to keep making sentences and turning them into paragraphs and then turning them into pages.
Some of them will be good.
Some of them might even be coherent.
And, one day, some of them might be published.
What matters is that the words are there.
To paraphrase Dory…just keep writing, writing, writing…
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