I have something to say and I want you to hear it. Now.
I could add "before I die." For, essentially, that unspoken thought powers the engine.
That’s my style of writing and why I ship every week.
Last week here at the Writers Institute, I picked up a few new terms as related to styles of essays. I’ve tried to take this new terminology and apply it to my own writing. To categorize some of the Musings I ship out every week. Although I seem to be my own breed when it comes to the shipment of frequent writing. It's more of what a journalist must do, but I am not a journalist. Anyway, defining "me" is not the point of this musing. Defining the essay styles is.
Shipping an essay in its most beautiful form is like bequeathing a faceted gem. As I hold it up to the light, I wonder – will all respond to a ray of this refracted light? Invest in its source?
Actually, a more honest account is that this took a heck of a lot of energy – time and emotions – to write. I’m flattened with no wind left in my sails. Will my spinning of words be comprehensible to anyone else? Please, let there be one person that says, "I’ve been trying to put that into words!" Then my time on this rather traditional personal essay will be well spent.
Sometimes my essays are chaotic. Written in staccato. With no other purpose than to ship a musing at 12:08 on Wednesday morning. Because that’s what I usually do. To break the rhythm? That might be the end of my musings. My “fragmented” essays mock the cadence of my life. At a certain time. During a particular season. Normally appearing when time is thick with transition. From summer to fall. From spring to summer. From Thanksgiving to Christmas. I can’t draw an arc from beginning to end. Maybe you'll sense the arc? I’ll take you for a ride in my jalopy. If you dare to ride along on this pot-holed gravel road.
A step up from chaos, perhaps managed chaos, are those essays in which I'm able to fluidly pull sentences together to create a paragraph. I feel a flow when joining these sentences from the first indented word to the final period. Then I hit “enter” and start the next paragraph, again grabbing sentences that blend together. I might write five or six of these segments not knowing how or why they “are,” but assume they must "be" for they come out of the same energy sequence, within a few hours. However, I lack transitions from one paragraph to the next. I can’t put my finger on how one is related to another; I struggle to tell you this because I don’t know myself. Still, you’re welcome to follow me and see where this ends up – maybe together, you and I will look back and see the arc of this “mosaic” essay by the time we read the last line.
Mind you, there are still unidentified essays in my “online storage unit.” Some may even be under the classification of Probably-Shouldn’t-Have-Been-Sent, for sometimes I feel like a cat hacking up a hairball and gingerly shaking my paws to step over and away from the mess. Never to look back. Even those, I generally still ship, thinking there is always the potential of someone relating to such disarray.