A Tuesday Morning Magical Experience

A couple mornings ago, some words popped into my head while I pruned spent roses. I rolled the words around on my mental tongue and realized I had a pretty good opening line, but no other lines came to me as I worked. When I came back inside, I sat down to research my next poetry form for the Creativity Workshop, but I just couldn’t concentrate. I closed the book and started to get up from the table. Instead, that line came back to me and I reached for my pen and legal pad.

I wrote down that first line and the floodgates opened. Out gushed two whole pages, as fast as I could write. It was spontaneous writing, and not half bad, but I wasn’t ready to look at it too closely yet. I didn’t even know what I had written. Flash story? Some form of poem?

This writing experience felt magical because it was not how I usually work. I didn’t sit down, close my eyes, and wait to see a scene or hear a conversation. I just wrote it down, then set it aside, to get a little distance.  Later that night, as I washed dishes I thought about the piece. I had written from the viewpoint of a woman caught up in a relationship and trying to sort out her feelings. The voice seemed familiar. After I put away the last dish, I re-read what I’d written. Each stanza(?), paragraph(?) started with a you said/I thought statement, and as I read those my eyes widened. Then I laughed.

These words could very well have been a conversation Meredith, a character from my recently completed novel, might have had with herself. I believe, in my subconscious, she did. That’s why it poured out so effortlessly. I just feel a little stupid that I didn’t see this while I was writing it.

I love these little surprise gifts, don’t you?