That Ship Has Sailed

It’s November first. October has slipped away without 31 blog posts logged. I started the month of posts talking about time and how it moves faster than I think it will, slipping out from under me, sailing off into the past–or the future–and now it’s done it again, leaving me fumbling for a reason why I missed it.

It’s complicated, as excuses tend to be, so I’m just going to wave good-bye to that October vessel and continue on into November until I finish 31 days of posts. I can still put on my Write31Days sweatshirt and keep writing.

Days get busy, weeks are full, and a month can easily wash away. The biggest challenge for me is not finding time to write, though. It’s finding words that want to be written.

I get tired of my words, the way I put them together and the way my voice sounds to me. They grind against each other; they are in the way, clanking together about the trivial or the banal. They feel bloated and squishy instead of sleek and fluid.  I want them to slip by unnoticed,  leaving an image without the words themselves causing a snag or calling attention to themselves. I hate it when the construction, the word choices or the subject feels labored, wooden and dull.

I rifle through my thoughts and experiences, looking for a topic that comes to life for me, that captures my imagination.Those are the words that want to be written. I like the simplicity that comes then–spare words painting clear pictures.

The water theme has been a little dry some days; it’s good to have a theme that squeezes a little bit, forcing me to be creative, but this one may have been more of a puddle than a deep well. I’ll keep fishing around, though; hopefully I’ll find some words that want to rush out and tell a story.