27/8/2017

​Yes, the ideas can come out of thin air. They just materialize, and then it is up to a writer to develop them immediately, let them rest and maybe get a more definitive shape and form, or just abandon them. 

As a writer abandoning an idea could only come for one reason. You rushed and overburdened it things that don’t belong there - a character that is out of place, an event that doesn’t seem plausible an over-elaborate description. Basically too much too soon. The writer overproduced.

And what is the sign? The Doobie Brothers. Or to be precise, their lead singer and keyboard player Michael McDonald and his smoothly polished white soul song I Keep Forgettin’. There’s that (Every Time You’re Near) addition in the title, but then, while writing it could be any distraction.

Actually, when you get stuck in your words, when there is an overproduced jumble on your screen, paper, or whatever, you lose YOUR plot, and you start being under the impression that you are forgetting something. You are not. 

Your idea was not developed properly, it has not matured fully yet and you’re attempting to cover it in too many words. It becomes an excuse, like in Forman’s “Amadeus” when Salieri suggests to the Austrian emperor why he shouldn’t like Mozart’s music “too many notes”. Unfortunately, in this case, it is for real. Too many words.

If you leave your text like that, it is just a pile of uncontrolled gibberish. You might feel sorry, for them, after all, it is your gibberish. Still, they got to go away. 

What you have to make sure is that your idea is a coherent one. Coherent ideas bear coherent writing. Every word then sits exactly where it should be, there aren’t too few or too many of them. The text takes the shape and form, where you actually can’t keep forgetting’ anything. 

And it might be one of the better moments to play that Michael McDonald song. And Mozart. Not at the same time. One after another is fine though.

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