Shooting for magic

Every writer knows about this.

You’re going along, spinning sentences, chugging them out, one word in front of the other.  The piece is coming out fine and serviceable, and it’s saying what you mean.

The process is like pedaling a bike. You pump the pedals and you move forward.

But about an hour into it, maybe two hours, if you keep pedaling over the crest of the hill, something happens.

Suddenly, from somewhere you can’t pinpoint, lines and phrases begin to tumble out ready-made.  Concepts bubble up from the deep.  You didn’t think of them, exactly.  It feels more like you are hearing them and writing them down.

You have no idea where any of this comes from.  But there it is, right there on the screen.

And the eerie part is, the stuff is better than you could ever write on purpose, in cold calculation.

You didn’t really create any of it.  You just took the words down, as dictated.

I’m wary of talking like this because it sounds so foofy and new-agey.  And because I don’t truly understand it.  I also worry about jinxing the process.

But that’s what happens.  The ideas that give you goosebumps, you can’t engineer them.

The best stuff just appears.  But only if you’re pedaling hard at the time.