The cursor blinks
When I hit publish
When I sit down to write, I stare at the blank page on my screen.
The cursor blinks.
My eyes, unblinking.
Eventually, I take a breath.
—
Here we go.
—
Typing the first word always feels monumental. In a steady and weighty kind of way.
Typing it feels like serious business. Like whatever word follows has to be the most special word ever. Like “effervescent”, or “ethereal”, or “esoteric”.
But it never mattered.
My first sentence always shows up cautiously. Like a whisper into a tunnel I can’t see the end of. Like pressing the first few notes on a piano whose black-and-white keys I haven’t touched in years.
Like I’m not entirely sure if the next sentence—or even the next phrase, or the next word—will come.
But it always does.
—
I don’t particularly think about how well I write, or what my thesis is, or even if I’ve told a complete story, or anything remotely compelling or interesting.
If anything, sometimes I look at other people’s writing with awe and curiosity—and if I’m being honest, a touch of envy—wondering how they managed to assemble their words into what I can only describe as music or magic.
I don’t really see my own writing the same way, but I guess I try my best to write something that gets as close as possible to the tunes and tempo of my own heart.
And if that means run-off sentences, em dashes that are falling out of fashion thanks to AI, half-formed musings masquerading as complete thoughts, so be it.
To be candid, it never feels fully in tune. But a thought, a moment, can’t stay in draft for long before it loses its texture and timbre, and its meaning to me. So even when it doesn’t feel quite right—whatever that means—I hit publish once it feels right enough.
Like what I’m about to do.
