Rhythm

The phrasing in my work is as much a matter of the musical concept of "phrasing" as it is the words of which it is comprised. Mom and dad gave me a good vocabulary, and words can be a matter of magic for me. But I will climb over three words for the right syllabication, syncopation, rhythm-ation; get me there by punctuation.

Yes, very silly - I know that. But the point is that I will change an entire sentence to hit the inflection I need, the momentum, and the bump-and-grind a concept I'm putting down requires of its words. Sometimes, I'll move a substantial word so it falls off the tongue at the right moment (and - yes - I read my writing out loud), or simply change the lesser words, even adding or subtracting, to arrive at the right phrasing and rhythm. Finally, when the need arises, I'll just change a substantial word outright, for another, if the shifts don't get a sentence or its paragraph into satisfactory shape.

It's not typical for me to hear these beats in advance of getting to the point of writing (though my stupid brain does go into writing-rhythm OVERDRIVE when I am in bed but unable to sleep). I don't hear them even in the sentence preceding the one which suddenly clunks unpleasantly. I just know, most often while I am actually writing, but always when I re-read, when the number of syllables doesn't work. If the emphasis doesn't balance with the rest.

I'm no Mozart, where the writing is within me, and I know it before I get it out; I know little more than my main subject, and the immediate goal of the scene I'm working on. Still, it's instantly apparent when it is *wrong*. Even when I don't read something out loud, the way my mind processes reading is a mental audio.

The blog gets a lot less of this attention from me than my work for publication. Even so, I imagine regular readers here get a sense of the movement and pauses of my voice - which, even as filtered through different characters maintains an essential nature I couldn't and wouldn't wish to change. This voice is borrowed - or echoed ... recorded. I took it from both my parents, but with very conspicuous characteristics from The Major Side.

I talk like my father. I talk like my aunt and uncle. I talk like my cousins and my brother. I'm not as good at it as most of them, but it fuels whatever skill I have as a writer. My work is my father's, my uncle's - certainly my brother's (who first took me to JRW's conference, which educated me into enough confidence to finally, seriously do the work). My work is derivative, in the most positive possible sense.

Rhythm is the music of my father's gravelly voice. It's the emphasis of my uncle, the pause of my grandfather, the precision of my grandmother, the loud laughter of my aunt.

It's also the shock of humor and the joy of my maternal grandma. It's my mom's decisiveness and sometimes her emotion and hesitancy. It's the memory of her daddy; the arcing, Southern "aw" or the incandescent urgency of her sisters; the lilting impenetrability of her brother, accustomed to sermons.

It's the blood of the body of my work, and blood doesn't work without its *pulse* ...


***


Rhythm keeps my work alive. It's not the only invigorating force. But it is inexchangeably vital. So important I'll come up with nonsense like "inexchangeability" just because I like the way it flows, like the way it feels against my mind's tongue.

Some people have a mind's eye.

I realize, in my mental senses - my mind's ear, my mind's tongue, dominate.