author’s notes #2

All good wordsmiths get ‘the thousand-yard stare’. That’s when you’re looking beyond the page. Some writers never cross beyond the second or third dimension of a page. After a while, writing on a ‘rack’ is like reaching into yourself and arranging the words on the inside of your ribcage ... you’re looking out ... visualising the rack and how those words translate to the reader, how those words feel on you. You’re always looking out, in and beyond.

The ribcage offers some choice ‘wire’ for the word. But if you’re going to use the ribcage as a rack, don’t use permanent ink, and what I mean by ‘permanent’ is overloading your rack with the dark ink that stains for life. I started making my own rules about writing and devising my own nomenclature: a ‘rack’ is a page, a ‘wire’ is a blank line. A ‘hump’ is a full-stop.

After words are yanked from the pool in my head, I hang them out on the ‘wire’ to dry, and then after the sun goes down, I throw them on the ‘rack’ and stretch them out a bit.