How DO I Write?

I see a little girl with pretty pigtails or a quiet bridge laced with vines. Sometimes I sketch it first; sometimes I feel a color and select a matching-hued notebook from my hoard. Some things are surefire inspiration each time like warm summer rain; some are flickering lightbulb ideas that pop in sudden bursts like a touching line.

Some days I can plan to write with my special writing songs' aid ("Never Stop" and "Bandoneon Acorazado" have never failed me--so helpful in November when I'm churning out sixteen hundred words a day), but some days I must pack my bags and grab my passport to start the journey at the spur of an instant.

Some days I use a clicky pencil to do deeper, more thoughtful pieces as it gives me a moment while writing to plan the next word; a Pilot pen is my rapid-fire beast for sputtered bursts on other days. Many aeons ago I used a miniature laptop to spill forth my ideas, but the poor thing was in an amnesiac accident and had to be retired. As of late I've discovered how the dusty musk--like a deliciously old book--of a typewriter keeps me punching away at the keys.

Some days I have to wrack the "guys in the sweatshop," as Stephen King so rightly wrote, yet others I find myself scrambling for the nearest notebook to pour down my whim-of-the-moment thoughts and watch it come alive like a Phoenix smouldering from the ashes.