Being Gorgeous

Part 1: "I want you to write for pleasure - for play" - Ursula K. Le Guin in Steering the Craft

Friday 10-25-2024 - I've been struggling with this prompt for several days now. And I just figured out why. It's because this is how I already write. The prompt is about playing with the sound of the words. Write something meant to be read out loud.

But that's how I already write. The words are flowing loudly through my head and it's all I can do for my fingers to keep up with writing them. And I am a fast typist BTW. Was a professional transcriptionist for a decade; top speed 130 words per minute.

My fingers fly over the keyboard.

People actually love to watch me type because of it.

Tap tap tap tap tap.

The rhythm of the words.

Sound. Sound is so important to those who can hear it.

And perhaps even more so to those who can't.

How much do people spend on mechanical keyboards to get just the right sound???

The way that I use spacing is intentional, crafted for reading on screens where big blocks of text are difficult to parse. Short paragraphs when I'm using paragraphs, and single sentences, line-by-line to create separate thoughts as the person "hears" my words flowing through their mind, in their voice if they've never heard mine, in my voice if they have.

I choose my words for the effect I want them to have. How I want the reader to feel when they're reading them. A manipulation that all writers undertake if we're being honest with ourselves.

Is this how this exercise was supposed to go? Or is this just a journaling exercise I'm doing leading to doing the actual exercise? Does it matter?

I'm writing.

That's the important part of this DIY MFA in Creative Writing after all.

To get me writing. Challenging myself. Stretching myself with exercises from a variety of authors and sources.

And I am writing.

Something.

I don't think it matters what.

Not really in the short-term.

It's about building the consistency.

The doing of the thing.

For me, that's writing.

For you, that might be something else.

Some words whisper.

Some words shout.

The voice you hear them in depends, as said before, if you've heard my voice or not. Most of you have not, so it's your own inner voice you're "hearing" it in. Unless you're one of those who doesn't have an inner voice at all, then I really would love with you to chat about how you're thinking works! I'm all verbal in my brain - I have aphantasia, no visual imagination.

Except in my dreams where it's vivid cinematic experiences that I barely remember in the morning.

I love the sounds of words. The way they fit together to (attempt) to express meaning. It's not the words fault when they don't, but how they were put together. And some things are harder to express in words than others are - though some languages handle stuff better than others. Whole new sets of sounds to combine in order to express meaning.

Part 2: