Random Literary Observation

I discovered just now that lovely WordImperfect decided it was not in the giving vein today viz the automatic saving of documents, and therefore that it had swallowed about half of an interview outline I'm putting together.

Fortunately, this discovery only warrants about half a head-bang. The outline was still pretty short and primordial, and I had most of the main points in my head anyway. But it prompted me to think again about the business of composition.

You see, I'm firmly convinced that the words I actually put down on the page - whether dead-tree or pixilated - are influenced by time, place and circumstances. Give me a specific topic and the assignment to write something about it half a dozen different times. The result will be half a dozen very different compositions. Maybe not different in terms of ultimate conclusion (although one can't rule that out completely), but different in choice of word or phrase, priority of arguments, logical connection and, ultimately, perhaps persuasiveness or artistic merit (depending on the type of compostion). And those differences can be influenced by a staggering variety of factors. Just a few examples include: time of day, amount of sleep I've had, diet, a recent piece of praise or criticism, whether I'm in dutch with the Missus, what musick is on the radio, even what book I last read before I sat down to do my own writing.

Indeed, the list of possible influences - and the continually shifting combinations of them - is virtually endless. And if that is the case, then the number of potential writings with which I might come up is also endless. And when I look at something I've written and contemplate the theoretically infinite number of versions it might have taken but didn't, well, then I get quite dizzy.