Bird in a Blizzard

It’s faint at first. And random. That’s the best feature. I never know when a story is going to start. I could be walking the streets of Downtown Los Angeles or stuck in its endless traffic and a voice will begin, faint at first, to tell me of a strange occurrence or confess something it dares not utter to anyone else or explain to me how what went wrong wasn’t their fault. But it’s always a whisper. Never much more than that at the start.

Then the chase begins.

If I absolutely cannot pull myself away from whatever bullshit I’m doing, I’ll jot down what the voice is saying and come back to it at a more appropriate time. This always sucks because I can lose its cadence altogether by the time I arrive at a suitable writing surface. But I’ll follow its remnants in the swirling of my mind, like listening for the chirping of a small bird in a blizzard. It’s a difficult task but once I’ve located the sound of that fleeting murmur I can begin to transcribe its words. It’s here when I’ll discover if my pursuit has been in vain. These voices can be so compelling but the majority lose their strength as I sit alone with them, as I ask them questions, the who, what, when, where and why. It’s natural. Not every voice should be given life. And some come to tell a fragment of a much larger story, one which will require many more voices to complete, while others only speak up to remind me that this, the sound of an unfamiliar revelation, the thrill of the chase, the speechless confession, is why I love writing.

This is the only process I’ve known. A process I didn’t choose for myself. I find it wonderful. To take in hand such a fragile form and grant it absolution with every keystroke. If only everything else in life were as simple.