Saturday, February 1, 2025
One of my favorite parts of writing a book is the data-collection phase. I love this part of writing. It feels like foraging. But the urge to explore and “hunt” is preemptive. It’s forging.
Foraging is stumbling upon words, writing down ideas, gathering quotes, and “happening” upon inspired writings and videos. Foraging is being a scavenger, uncovering what’s there, so to speak. But prior to that is something we often miss. Forging – copying the leading edge of the divine’s, preemptive urge to create.
Forging means to make or shape (a metal object) by heating it in a fire or furnace and beating or hammering it. It also means to create, or falsify as in forging a signature. Forging means to follow the preemptive highness that urges the dance of foraging. And this is where the creative process cuts through butter like a hot knife. There is premonition – pre-motivation, a zing. Hunger is a sensation which leads to hunting and gathering. Exercise. Dancing. Benefit.
Writing a book is the same. You have a surge, a precognitive “hmmm,” and you start dancing through the forest of feelings and visceral gobbledygook. The forging is a stirring. The forging overcomes inertia and leads to pleasurable movement, then the movement leads to the hunt, the foraging. You follow the “hmmm.” The “hmmm” leads to “aha.” The “aha” makes it happen easily, turning dream into reality – a formidable process for scavengers who don’t know how this works.
Often, you simply sit in the duck blinds and wait. Remember Elmer Fudd? “Shhh. Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits.” Most of us are scavenging, not forging. We’re not dancing, but simply holding our hands up to the sky begging. Be very, very quiet. The “hmm” might be calling you to create wonderful things in your life.