wordsmithing – bendingtheneedle

The Process

He sits in solitude with his paragraph

an incongruent splash

of black letters on a white screen

before cracking the silence

with a rhetorical “Shal we?”

Like a maniacal blackjack dealer

he shuffles the words

whispering them to himself

listening to their sound

until they click in perfect cadence

and a rolling rhythm is formed

where words formerly choppy

now sway in unison

like obedient bulbs

strung elegantly

on an idea wire

“Done” he says to himself.

“We’re done.”

The Writer

He sat alone with his paragraph.

He stared at this lump of white letters on a black screen for nearly twenty minutes.

Then he began to breathe life into it, shuffling words intently, whispering them to himself, listening to how they sounded until he found the perfect cadence—fifty disparate words, strung like bulbs on an idea wire.

“Done,” he said to himself.

“I’m done.”