There’s a state of consciousness only available to me in the middle of the night after having slept a few hours when ideas are hyperactive. Inner critics and editors are still asleep. To capture these thoughts in words could be the answer to every writer’s block ever dropped on my path.
Everyone has these moments. The perfect wording will spring up from nothing while driving. Or showering. Or some other activity when writing is not convenient. You think you’ll remember, and you do. But when you start typing, the poetry is lost. They are just words and they don’t convey the impact you felt.
It’s not always a problem of ineffability. There are words. They never seem good enough when a pen is in hand, though. You have memories of melodious phrases clearly enunciated in your brain, but to recall them finds them lacking. As with gifts, the barrier between the idea and the reality is often more attractive.
With the ineffable, at least it’s forgivable.
When I write about sitting in traffic in New York City and glancing sideways at a woman who happened to be looking my way at the same time, and with only a tilted-head grin from her that she had lost everything in the world she ever cared about, it’s clear. The moment that transpired, however, was beyond words.
Seeing a yellow bicycle strapped to someone’s van in San Jose slapped me with a forgotten episode at age nine of burying evidence in my grandparent’s backyard. When I say there are “no words” for that experience, the power is nevertheless understood.
The internal dialogue of a short story character never seems complete. The first paragraph of the greatest idea for a novel you’ve ever had will torment you for years. The miracle is that anything ever materializes when it never lives up to the original thought.
