The Writing Moment


“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

― E.L. Doctorow, Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews

Yeah, and sometimes your electrics short and the headlights go out, spraying panic all through your nervous system.

The Writing Moment

The muse said, “Write this,” and dictated. The writer balked. “I don’t know how this fits together with what I’ve already written nor where it’s going.”

Patting him on the head, the muse whispered, “Don’t worry. It’ll all come together.”

Glowering, the writer did as bid, hoping that he’d get a decent editing muse assigned to him later.

The Naked Women Dream

As I explored it in dawn’s rising light, I realized that the dream was about dealing with others’ opinion.

I was a young writer in a cafe, very busy with computer, notebook, and coffee at my round wooden table. Small and crowded, the cafe was noisy. I left briefly and zip, in dream fashion, was at another business. It appeared to be another cafe or restaurant but featured naked women. I learned the business was closing, which was why I’d gone to the establishment. I’d been talking and visiting several of the women who worked there, doing research and interviewing them. Their information was essential to what I was writing. I worried about losing their input, so I was staying in touch with them, trying to help them get jobs, etc.

I felt good about helping them and hopeful. I noticed as an aside that the place where they worked and the place where I wrote were decorated the same way and were the same size, an aspect of the two places which amused me.

Returning to the cafe where I was writing, another woman confronted me. Hostile and noisy, she made snide remarks about where I’d been, because “She’d seen me.” I acknowledged that was where I’d been and attempted to explain why without going into much of what I was writing, but she kept dismissing me. Each time I began speaking, she rudely spoke over me, denying the chance to tell the truth, insisting that I only went and helped those women because they were naked. I grew angry and frustrated, and then dismissive of her.

Dream end.

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