Beginning to Write (Journal 3)

Writing is malleable, and clay is a serviceable metaphor.  Words can be shaped, pushed, twisted, formed for any number of purposes.  Contracts and compacts become utilitarian jugs to hold essential words that sustain.  Poetry and figures of speech are crafted like decorative vases and urns.  Fables and stories are the bowls that hold savory deliciousness.  And in the same way that first sentences have license to be stupid, so, too, do those early shapes and forms that emerge as that inchoate lump of clay is transformed.  Progression is key to transformation; early attempts may have to be discarded or re-worked, but those early attempts are necessary for progress.  That progress, however, cannot occur unless you have begun.  Barzun states that “there can be no second paragraph until you have a first.”  Even if that first is moved or removed, transformed, shaved away, or stretched out, that beginning is essential to later progress.  I am not sure if knowing how to begin to write is, as Barzun states, “a great art,” but certainly there is an art in any willingness to work the material in your hands.  The art is in ridding yourself of reluctance and embracing the eagerness to just begin in the first place.  It's like that first cannonball into early June waters; you have to take the plunge all at once, get wet, jump right in, then you can concentrate on enjoying the way the water sluices over your skin, the way it splashes and sprinkles beneath your limbs.  Words work the same way: let loose from your pen or your keyboard.  Take the plunge and begin to shape and sculpt the material in your fingers.  You just have to start.