Hello From…?

I assure you, the title of this post isn’t meant to be a guessing game. So, if you’re yelling, “from the other side!!!” at your screen, you don’t win a prize. You win something much better! I don’t know what that is, though. Stop pressuring me. Stop! Now no one gets anything.

Okay, this post is in response to this week’s Sunday Scribblings prompt from Aaron at The Confusing Middle. The prompt is, Hello.

Immediately, I thought of Adele because….hello, it’s her. Also, last Sunday, she had a sit-down interview with Oprah. I watched it and found one of her responses to be so relatable that I’ll probably never forget it.

At one point, Adele said that she can’t really explain where her music comes from.

She said, “I don’t think, as a person, I have what my singing has. I’m pulling from somewhere else and I don’t know how I access it.”

She went on to say, “I don’t think I’m that deep in real life.”

Of course, Oprah had to sit there with an inquisitive look on her face, as if she couldn’t fathom what Adele was saying. All interviewers would do that.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting on the couch in disbelief that Adele just put into words how I have always felt about myself and this blog. In that moment, I felt understood.

I am Adele and she is me. Okay, maybe that’s too much. I am Adele-adjacent. No? Fine. I am Paul-far away. Happy now?

I have said many times that I don’t really plan what I’m going to write, it just comes out of me when it’s ready. I sit, I type, and whatever I say, I say. And then I’ll look back and sometimes not recognize my words because I don’t know how I came up with them.

How do I access these words?

I’m pulling from somewhere else…just like Adele.

Yes, I am going to milk this comparison.

This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone else describe their writing experience the same way as mine. I am, for the lack of a better word, gobsmacked.

That part of her interview won’t stand out to anyone else. I’m sure it’s already been forgotten about by most. But I’ll always remember it.

“I don’t think I’m that deep in real life.”

Yes, that’s me.

I’m not sitting down with people and having long, insightful chats about things the way I sometimes do with my blog posts. I’m not presenting the optimistic or idealistic view to everything. That’s not me.

Let’s get food and talk about if it’s good or not and complain about things that don’t matter, before transitioning to sports, or sharing old memories, or just finding stuff to laugh about. Or, my favourite, creating random scenarios out of one small thing and letting it snowball into a dozen other things to talk about that border between fiction and reality.

That’s me in real life. I think. Maybe. I don’t know. Leave me alone.

And then I come to my blog and dig out words from deep within that I didn’t even know were there. I uncover feelings, thoughts, and opinions I never knew I had. The keys on the keyboard just have a way of extracting them from my fingers.

It’s osmosis.

So, yeah, hearing that my creative process is similar to Adele’s was quite a confidence boost, as well as validation that my style can work.

Most of the time, interviews with famous people are about what they’ve done, rather than how they did it. The “how” is always more interesting and inspiring to me. I appreciate Oprah for uncovering the “how”.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got to say, so let’s end this abruptly.

Goodbye.

What is your writing process like?

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