When we write, our thoughts can get ahead of us like we’re trying to catch up with them in a relay race. They sprint ahead while we struggle to hand off the baton and keep up from behind. Sometimes our thoughts will leave us in the dust, speeding blindly forward as if the baton was in its hand when it’s actually empty.
When thoughts get so far ahead that we can’t catch up with them, we do our best to remember what our mind told us, typing from working memory rather than following it side-by-side, which is what we prefer. It’s like our hands, no matter how fast we type, can’t catch up with the voice inside our head that dictates to us at an unrelenting pace.
But instead of lamenting about it, this dilemma presents itself as an opportunity. Writing no longer is a sprint after our thoughts, but a chance to write in broad strokes. Instead of trying to create a masterpiece, it’s a chance to see what secrets the subconscious has to bare.
If we give it a chance, thoughts will begin to spring out in its raw and purest form, unfiltered and organic like a tree branch that extends and twists about openly in the air, unguided by some preconfigured pattern or design. It’s unique and personal without the impression that it’s been borrowed or copied from elsewhere.
It’s ours and of our own making–writing at is finest. So when thoughts start to leap ahead as we write, shrinking far away in the distance, we can at least be free to express the deepest layers of thought that have been dormant in the recesses of our mind.
Fallton Havenstonne 