I just want to write. I want to feel the pen sweep across the page.  I want to experience once more the exhaustion of muscles as they struggle to keep up with my brain. as it spews forth words to sum up my thoughts, feelings, and desires. I want to watch as a page fills with text and glory in the satisfaction it brings. Each flipped pages is like the growing roar of a crowd cheering you on harder as you build up speed and make progress towards the end goal.

So why then do I not write? I don’t write because I feel too constipated to begin.  I fell like when I start the flood gates will burst open and torrent out in an incomprehensible stream.  I feel that I will lose all I have been concocting in my mind and produce only garbage; jabbering nonsense that barely conveys a child’s tale, let along the epics painted in the gallery on my mind. And so I don’t write… And I don’t write… And I don’t write until my very creativity stops spinning.  It stops because my mind is too full.  There isn’t enough space to hold the great ideas I already have with the new ones.  It is too hard to hold on to them all.  They slip away and I lament.  I lament until I have a new day of imagining and I realize that the good ideas never leave me.  No, they were safe and secure.  I just didn’t trust it.  I was like an over protective parent.  I smothered my own creative process; first by not letting the ink flow, and second, by not letting the sieve of ideas do it’s job.  After all, the ideas that are big enough, full enough, vibrant and captivating enough can’t slip through the holes in my mind’s colander.  And like a colander, more ideas can be added and the whole batch rinsed again with critical thinking, creative exploration and shared discussion. Yes, in the 2nd and 3rd rinses I might lose some more ideas but those still there are solid, usable nuggets; purified and refined Tara mind-gold.

And so, in writing the frustration of desire, in describing the fear and the truth; in putting a pen to paper once more, I feel the doors opening.  It is like airing out the house after the cold winter has passed; like feeling the refreshing spring air sweep away the stale hibernation of winter. So now, my writing feels refreshed. The thoughts flow out again without bursting the gates as I feared. I believe they can flow now because I stopped fighting myself.  I could have broken the system with my tight clenched fear, but, in the calm acceptance of peaceful writing, writing with no goal or purpose but to clean out the cobwebs; everything is able to flow freely to it’s destination: a string of words on a page that bring my mind to yours.

Friends, if you feel like you are blocked up in your writing, just remember that you can only build something by getting out of your own way and building. Don’t beat a dead or exhausted horse however. If story A is stuck, work on story B or poem C. Read novel Z or listen to audio book Y. Share your thoughts with friends L, M, N, O and P. No man or woman is an island– you must share within and without to bring ideas to birth. Just as I have herein.

Blessings and pleasant composing!