I forgot how to write

It is 9:50 pm.

Okay, now it is 9:51pm.

For 53 minutes, I've been sitting with my laptop open, desperately trying to start writing a piece. It is a piece I am being paid to write. It is a piece that very needs to be done soon; in truth the writing of it is long overdue, even if the due date of the complete piece is still on the horizon. 

However, there is a tiny problem:

I forgot how to write. 

Now, I know that sounds completely and utterly idiotic, especially because I wrote "I forgot how to write," as well as several written sentences at the start (and clearly I intend to keep up this ramble for several paragraphs more.).  

However, writing is much more than the act of typing words on a page. Writing is an act of illusion in which the words are chosen and matched and paired and joined and then the sentences are culled and pulled from thin air like glass from sand, until those sentences are chosen and matched and paired and joined and then the paragraphs are culled and pulled from thin air like glass from sand, until those paragraphs are then, you guessed it:

Chosen and matched and paired and joined and culled and pulled from thin like glass from sand until you've formed this harmonic, melodic piece of writing from a place where there was absolutely nothing.

It is now 9:57pm.

I am not entirely sure when I forgot how to perform this trick--how to make the page fill with words and form the illusion of something that is real, when it actually is not real, but is simply characters dancing together in harmony on a page. 

It is now 10:01pm. That run-on sentence took me 4 minutes. 

10:03pm, I went back to reread what I wrote. 

I forgot how to perform this magic. I forgot how to write. 

10:04pm and I have absolutely no where to go with this schtick, no where to carry my darling forward and no words to begin the piece that I must begin. 

10:05pm and I wonder when I actually forgot how to write and I wonder if I remember when I forgot, maybe I can remember when I remembered how and then I will no longer forget.

And it will be 10:06pm and that page will begin to dance and delight and illusion itself into something that you can hold in your hands; but you think can.

10:07pm. I might remember a little how to write; maybe it is like riding a bike. Maybe I just have to trust that I will remember--at least I can fake it through 10:08 and 10:09 and 10:10 and maybe by 10:15pm, I would have faked it enough to make to the first sentence of something that can be culled and pulled and matched and conjured into an illusion. 

It is 10:15pm. 

And well, maybe now by 10:25pm I'll figure it out again. 






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