Twister

There is something that writers, writers creating a novel, that is, can do that scientists have been trying to achieve for years. Lean closer and I'll tell you...ready?

When a writer starts out on an idea for a novel, gets down the bare bones, the frame work , the scaffold of words, and throws them down on a page in some semblance of order, they inadvertently create , or you could say summon, a tornado

"Eh? What bollocks. "I hear you shout.

Nah, hear me out - that twister you brought into the world sucks in every bit of emotion , tiny passing thought, big ,sticky, tenacious thoughts, quirks of personality , random observations, perversion... anything in its path, up into a strange , chaotic blur of matter.

And it's not just confined to the page. It follows you- standing at the bus stop it will appear whipping up a frenzy down the road. At work gurgling and big in front of Jane from accounts desk. It flies around , following your every move sucking up what it can from your immediate surroundings.

It's bloody scary, not to say exhausting dancing about the mouth of one of those things every day, holding back from being slurped into oblivion. Over a matter of time maybe a year, maybe two, it starts to shrink , then one unquantifiable day, it vanishes. And what your left with is a mesh of broken words, and ideas picked up from the places you've been. Sentences strewn, dazed ,lolling across the page, needing urgently to be rearranged and tended to.

The tornado I created has left me now . I no longer fear oblivion and the unknown. Now the hard work starts . Now I'm cleaning up and trying to make some sense of the mess.