How An Idea Can Grow from Writer's “Blank”

Along comes a seed.

I sometimes feel like an apple inside a candied shell. 

When I’m stuck, when I don’t have any fresh ideas, I sometimes, as now, sit down and write precisely that. I’m mired, glued, bolted, pinned, frozen. Take your pick. No characters, no plots, no swirling ideas. 

There’s no use denying it, so I give the moment its due. 

It’s not writer’s block – an unwelcome, if sometimes necessary, pause in the action.

This is all out Writer’s Blank.

At those moments, I question whether writer even applies. I often wonder that anyway – I just like to write. 

I acknowledge The Blank because the very act of doing so may provide the drop of oil I need to shift from dead-still-neutral into first gear. It could just be the act of putting pen to paper. Or the honesty of it. 

With luck, along comes a memory, image, concern, laughter, or sarcasm. 

A seed. 

This catharsis happens less than I would like. The reasonable me stops grinding the gears. Grinding is a recipe for gibberish, even if it momentarily spares me from insufficiency – at least until I reread what I wrote during those moments of revving.

Ideas do come. Sometimes they need your own unorthodox way to find you.

Photo by Hush Naidoo Jade Photography on Unsplash

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