Letters from Marilyn - Update 26

Two things have been on my mind this past week: time and causality.

Time, in the purest sense of the word, is defined as the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.

In connection, causality is defined as the relation of cause and effect. 

When I was in college, my writing professors would have us participate in various freewriting techniques. The one I remember the most is called loop writing, in which the writer engages in a topic of choice for a timed interval. When the timed interval is up, the writer goes back to underline three or four key words, or even phrases, in their writing. One underlined segment is selected, and it becomes the starting point of the next timed interval. In essence, the writer is writing in a loop, a continual chain of ideas that are the result of the previous.

If we could describe the way our minds work, 90% of the time I would state that mine is in a loop. One idea is a result of another, and so on and so forth.

Letters from Marilyn - Update 25

Do you ever wish you could freeze time? Just to hold onto a moment for a little longer?

I have been re-reading M's letters, trying to find the words to launch her story. I have written middle chapters and end chapters, but no beginning chapters. When I place the cursor at the very start of that first page, I find myself staring at it, watching its pulsing and blinking like the ticking of a metronome. It feels like the cursor is waiting for me. Waiting for me to give it letters to form words, and words to form sentences.

Beginnings are the hardest. In writing, in starting over, in taking a step forward into an uncertain future. It is hard to change beginnings, after all. You can alter your path, change your steps, erase your words, create a different ending. But that first moment, it can never be taken back. And since my last post, I have felt without words, stuck staring at a blinking cursor on a blank page.

I have had this mental block for months. I have spent hours, days, weeks pondering how to find the words to lift the fog. I have been on countless drives to nowhere, hoping that the clear roads and skies would somehow clear my mind. I have read dozens of books, believing that immersing myself in a story would perhaps spark ideas for Marilyn's.