The Process

So I'm doing some errands with Sketch in the car and my mind is racing, writing the next scene in the novella. I'm about to get it down now. And I think to myself, the scene now is written, it's just not out of my head yet, and in a way going any farther with it, putting it down in language out of my head, is superfluous, the real work has already been done. And once again I think that maybe old writers reach a point when they do stop here, writing in the head but not going farther with it, and again I'm reminded of all the old farts mumbling to themselves I've encountered over the years, thinking they were a little nuts, when in fact they may just be writers and poets doing their usual work. Very interesting. Zen, after all, maintains that poetry is not the words on a page but the mode of thought in the mind of the poet. So why put the words down when the thought is the essence?

But I haven't reached this stage of enlightenment yet, if that's what it is, and so I go now to put down the scene already written in my head.