Writing Out of Tune

When I read the first draft of something I’ve written the content is there but there’s no harmony. Like an array of beautiful instruments needing the director’s tuning fork, the words play their own melody. A thought here, a word there, and a run on sentence devouring half the page. Oh, the run ons—the’re everywhere. Ideas come whirring across the page as if they blew in from a storm. The passion and energy once whirring through my head form rivulets of disciplined work. When the storm settles, the rhythm like ocean waves gather in lines and paragraphs.

As the director of my work, I bring the parts together into a beautiful symphony that I call “The Page.” I run across the pages later and say, “I wrote that?” Wow! Then another thought dances in scattered words across my page. I scoop them up, move them around, and begin the job of forming a book out of individual pieces that were once out of tune.