I’m in the process of putting together a novella of about 20,000 words. The first draft is done, and now I need to stop.

Yes, you read correctly. I need to stop writing and sit back and do nothing. This is because while I may know what I am doing, I don’t know, really, what I am writing. This text is full of allusions, metaphors and sideway meanings that I have not discovered yet. There is, I’m beginning to realise, a hidden structure underneath this story, something that is mimicking a fairy tale from long ago. It’s hiding there, like an underground cellar, and I need to uncover it. But which one? Cinderella? Sleeping Beauty? Not sure. Don’t know.

But if I push it, the whole house of cards will collapse and I’ll be left with nothing. This structure can’t conform to my own conscious decisions, it has to be allowed to come to fruition by itself (at least initially – editing is still a conscious decision, obviously). It can’t be made ‘Perfect’ in any arbitrary way, it has to have its own logic. Like the random but correct surface of a walnut, it must be what it is if it is to have any authenticity.

I am rambling. Firstly because I have thirty seconds to type this blog out. Secondly because this is not an area of intelligence controlled by my pre-frontal cortex. Instead it is decided by my spine, like dancing, and if I over think it, none of it will make sense.