If you have no interest in the technique known as “freewriting”, today’s essay might cause you to stupse and go on to more stimulating items by my fellow columnists Esther Phillips, Al Gilkes and Matthew Farley. I would not hold it against you.
It’s about a shirt. Yes, a shirt. The same can be said about an ageing pants or an ageless pair of slippers. You are reluctant to let them go.
In his stimulating book Writing With Power, Peter Elbow explains how to write without thinking about writing.
Mr Elbow says: “We can usually speak without thinking about speech – without thinking about how to form words in the mouth and pronounce them and the rules of syntax we unconsciously obey – and as a result we can give undivided attention to what we say.
“Not so writing. Most people are distracted from their meaning by considerations of spelling, grammar, rules and errors. Most people experience an awkward and sometimes paralyzing translating process in writing.”
He is saying that it’s much easier to “shoot off your mouth” than to write.
Long before discovering Writing With Power, I’ve been practising that approach. Take for example my old seersucker shirt: in its heyday it was a joy to wear. The gentle texture of that fabric caresses the skin and gives one the urge to get out into the outdoors.
I google “seersucker” and learn that it is a thin, all-cotton fabric, commonly striped or checkered, used to make clothing for spring and summer wear. The word came into English from Hindi, originating from the Persian words “shir o shekar”, meaning milk and sugar, probably from the resemblance of its smooth and rough stripes to the smooth surface of milk and the bumpy texture of sugar. Ironing is not necessary.
Then, one day I notice a slight shearing at the base and I explain it away by telling myself that that flaw won’t be seen: it’s below the line of the belt. The shirt has undergone many a washing. (Have you ever noticed the buffeting that goes on inside a washing machine? Far more violent than our mothers’ juckin’ boards of the 1940s.)
One day I don my favourite shirt and my wife says: “You can’t go out in that; there’s a hole in the middle of your back.” Like counsel trying to defend the indefensible, I argue, only to be overruled by my son who agrees with his mother: “Daddy, she’s right. Don’t you have several other shirts? Retire that one, man. You’ve been wearing that since I was in diapers!”
Reluctantly, I give in. Now my favourite shirt is headed for ignominious retirement, doing home duty only, being worn around the house as more holes appear as it undergoes more trauma in the washing machine.
Then, the final insult: a workman comes to varnish the wooden rails of the banister on the verandah and asks for “a piece of old cloth”. My old seersucker shirt is torn in two. The other half will end up in the back, wiping off car tyres or some other degrading chore. Eventually, and not too long afterwards, my dear old seersucker shirt disappears into my memory.
Peter Elbow consoles those of us who struggle at times to produce something interesting for your $2.50 with: “To write is to overcome a certain resistance: you are trying to wrestle a steer to the ground; to wrestle a snake into a bottle; to overcome a demon that sits in your head. To succeed in writing or making sense is to overpower that steer, that snake, that demon.”
Freewriting helps you to think of topics to write about.
Sometime in the future, I plan to write an essay about the Saturday morning at Browne’s Beach when I saved the life of a drowning bee. Yes, a lowly but very important little honey bee.
Have a good year ahead!
• Carl Moore was the first Editor of THE NATION and is a social commentator.Email carlmoore@caribsurf.com