Condensation

On the back of yesterday’s post, I’m going to talk some more about writing. I have a complicated relationship with writing. It’s hard for me to say that I like it, yet various forms of writing are very much hobbies for me.

I don’t think I’ll ever write a novel. I don’t have anything against novels, certainly I’ve read plenty of them. The problem is that I don’t know how to write something that long.

I don’t know how to write anything long. My words seem to somehow take up less space on the page than other peoples'.

I will write and write and write. I’ll ramble. That’s what it feels like to me. But then when I look at the lengthy thing that I have written it’s two or three paragraphs. Hardly a hundred words. It feels as if the words collapse and condense when I’m not looking. And then how can I continue? I have already said all that I have to say? How can I add to it, bulk it up when there is no more in my mind to add?

Understandably, this caused me quite a lot of trouble in school. I would always get halfway through the assigned length of an essay and find that I had said all that I had to say on the topic.

I think this has to do with why I’ve been interested in poetry lately. If you want short, small, dense writing the poetry is your genre.

Only a few words,
a few lines, are on the page.
Those few are enough.