Tapping Away

This morning I’m tapping away at my computer keyboard. Last night I was tapping away at a Christmas show.

I guess I should explain that I’m taking a beginners’ tap class.

I am constantly discovering connections between writing and dancing. A big one is that both require my stomach to activate and engage with what I’m doing. In dancing, a strong stomach stabilizes my whole top line and sets the stage for magic to happen.

In writing, a steady hum in my stomach signifies that I’m interested in what I’m doing. Readers are likely to be interested too. When my stomach doesn’t turn on, I hit the delete key and look for another topic. (It happens depressingly often. Am I really that boring?)

It’s the eternal question of where ideas come from.

In dance, the music generates many of the ideas. Get yourself a good piece of music, and you can’t miss.

Writing is more problematical. Having a terrific topic and great ideas is only the beginning.

Years ago I wrote a doctoral dissertation about Bernard Shaw that thrilled my dissertation committee. Breakthrough stuff, they said. Publish it!

But I couldn’t. Because it was a learn-as-I-go project (probably most dissertations are), the ideas didn’t hang together.

I spent several futile years trying to find a way to make it work. Total failure. (Well, not totally. I kept researching and learned a lot more about Shaw.)

And then one day a student of mine said something about Shaw’s Pygmalion that set off fireworks in my brain. “It’s a play about language,” she said.

Eureka. I was off and running.

Back to my earlier point. Ideas aren’t enough. You need what used to be called “an occasion for writing” – a jumping-off point. I find this hard to do sometimes even in a letter to family or friends. I have all kinds of things to say about what’s been going on in my life. But how do I make the connection to the person who’s going to read my letter? It’s wonderful if I can say something like “I was thinking about you yesterday when XYZ happened” – but sometimes there isn’t any XYZ connection.

The other requirement (at least for professional writing) is a unifying idea. Again, that can be tough. Life is messy. Rarely is an experience unmitigated joy or a ghastly disaster. (I was in an automobile accident a couple of weeks ago. My beloved PT Cruiser wasn’t worth fixing, and the bruising on my arm was a problem with the sleeveless dresses I wore at a dance competition a week later. But the EMTs were nice, the emergency room was interesting, and my insurance company was wonderful.)

I’m rambling! Witness the real-world writing process at work. (Can you tell that my stomach was humming the whole time?)

Pencils in Wire Cup

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