Limbering Up

There ought to be some kind of limbering-up exercise a writer can do. Joggers pose around in the streets trying to pull their feet off, musicians play scales and arpeggios, actors pull faces and make strange noises. What can a writer do? Compose haiku? Write out the alphabet?

I'm about to write the very last scene of my new novel TimeSplash! It's a tender scene that puts the final, delicate touch to a blossoming relationship, but it has also to tie off a number of lose ends from various plotlines, and I'd like it to end on a light, humorous note. I have the scene in my head but not the actual words. I now need to put it down on paper in all its subtlety - and I have performance anxiety.

Writing, for all that I do it in my quiet office on an isolated mountaintop, is in many ways a public performance. Just as a pianist on a stage must get every note right and give the performance the full emotional intensity the piece demands, so must the writer pull off a virtuoso performance with everything he writes. Some pieces are harder than others, some require more technical skill, some more emotional engagement, but every piece must be performed as well as it can be. The goal is always to be perfect, flawless, magnificent, to leave the audience enraptured.

So here I go with that daunting, final scene.

Wish me luck.


(The picture is 'Warming Up' by John Asaro.)