This will be the second time out of 400 blog postings that I’ve stared blankly at the screen, not knowing what to talk about. Nothing comes then my lids get heavy then I’m fending off full-on nodding off. My minds a blur, a fuzzy focusless villa pulsing with sheer nothingness. So let’s do it up and pay homage to those times when the combination of no ideas, a blank canvas and all the time in the world come together and magic happens.
Rarely do I struggle with what to say in the literary sense. Talk to me in person and I’ll bore the aytch out of you fast. Drawing blanks aka writers block I look at as just a gateway to something bigger and better. There’s no real gravity to it, it’s something people hide behind temporarily. Even in the fleeting times of not being able to focus, often the greatest clarity comes crashing through the cosmos and into our dried up brains. Point in case my juices are flowing now and it’s not because I forced it but because it was always sitting there from the get go. Just needed the fog to lift.
Which leads to another wonderful attribute necessary in the game: patience. Just like those red stop lights sometimes we need forces outside ourselves to have us stand alone and firstly focus then get a mouthful of patience. If I rush things along and write for the sake of writing nobody will want to read it (bless your souls for reading anyway!!!). If you take your child to the hospital without battling the fever at home first time is hugely wasted. If you yell at your husband before listening to his explanation many problems that could have been non-existent are now tearing at the seams of your marriage. Maybe a stretch but the virtue of patience will not be overstated.
So you sit through the braindeadity, you wait for a bit and breathe, and then the fun part comes next: filling in the blanks. The Mona Lisa outline took six years to complete. The shading in and fleshing out took 12 hours. Just kidding, I have no idea about said Lisa but I’m just saying the meat of the story is the easiest, it just flows or should. In writing a book or a mini-fictional series the part I struggle with the most is the beginning and the end. The rest is cake. Well maybe not quite but this is what I’m saying. The adding of color, of spice, of background.. you can only get there by being patient. Also being one with the universe never hurt. You do the math.
Okay so there was little or no magic within this passage but at least it makes some semblance of sense, does it not? Don’t answer that, especially audibly or in the comments. I can’t say I welcome a mental fog. I won’t admit I like a 90 second case of “writer’s block”. But I will say that even this crap has it’s place. Oooh, I should have italicized that; very Shakespearean, no? No. But seriously now, all in it’s place. Repeat that 3 times. Then become one with the universe.