On Recording

It seemed that all my inspired thoughts arrived when I was driving. Usually when there was no paper or pen to hand. I'd sit in traffic running the line or idea through my head in an attempt to fix it there until I got home or to my desk and could write it down. But it never seemed to work. Between the idea arriving and my being somewhere with a pen in my hand, the words had either disappeared or had lost their verve.

So I rifled through my cupboards and found my old hand-held recorder, a gadget I had bought in grad school to capture lectures when my brain gave out. I stored it in the car's center console with the CDs, receipts, sticky coins and Starbucks coffee sleeves. When the next line arrived, I grabbed the recorder and gave it the words...which would have worked a treat if the thing had housed batteries with a little life in them.

So I put in batteries. Expensive non-supermarket ones. Then I moved my zippy velcro'ed CD holder from the passenger seat visor to the driver's seat visor so I could slip the recorder in the little mesh holder on the front--just at the right height for recording mouth-to-mic. And I worked out how to work the voice recognition switch so it would turn on automatically when the words came.

Since then, the words haven't come. Not once. Now, I'm wondering if they ever did or whether I imagined it. Sometimes I think I am better at preparing for writing than I am at writing itself. Or at least, if I enjoy the preparation more rather than the writing. Maybe it's just easier to control.