From preamble to the art of writing or writing is the art
My father had just died.
Hemingway’s book « The clock squeezes for you » was half read on the bedside table. We gathered with mom. The apartment was quiet. It still smelled dad, or rather, John Silver without a filter. The following year, Mom also died.
Security? What is it? I remember his friend’s words when he lost his parents. « Now there is nothing between myself and death anymore. » I understand him. It, above all, the emotional buffer between one’s self and the last breath is no more. Life’s responsibility is suddenly resting on one’s own shoulders.
Why this melancholy? Maybe it depends on the car ride with the daughter past the Gravlunden where a small part of the ashes after her grandmother is scattered? The daughter’s answer when I asked what part of grandma we buried is forever engraved in memory. « That’s the heart. Of course. »
Writing is difficult, especially introductions, so -called preamble. They should catch the reader with a few sentences. The daughter is good with words and proud is her father who just found a document in the computer called « Emmaisms » – a child’s small deposits that places in any newspaper text, for example names and new. A favorite:
« Dad, the deal is not open because it is so much morning. »
Janne Lindström was A god -blessed writer and friend. The cancer was long time. Janne was insightful but still saw the future, the little he had left. « I have, I would think, away a year left. I want to write something more. I want to write as I have always done and hope it will be good. I do not want to be done. » Almost three days later, he died.
Almost as difficult as preamble is to write an end. I myself struggle by writing the intrigue in my recently started novel and gives a grateful thought to all the talented writers I learned from. No mentioned and no one forgotten – except for one – Mats Lundegård, which is no more.
At his funeral, his friend Jan Mosander gave a speech in which he reproduced a scene where Mats and two competing colleagues watched a war a long time ago. One colleague leaned to the other and whispered:
« You should go near Mats Lundegård because he thinks loudly – and it can save your preamble until the next day. »
Read More boutsfor example About different kinds of color blindness and a coffee with Hédi Fried.
