Flow

I'm sitting now in front of my computer as I have been for the last hour now and I'm waiting for something to come to me. I'm feeling drained these days and I haven't written anything new in a week. I've been working on revisions so I haven't abandoned the task but there is a story I am working on that I need to find a new ending for it and I just can't get myself through.

I took some time off of pressuring myself to write and read a short story but that didn't work and now I'm back to staring at the computer screen and beginning to doubt my abilities...again. I keep thinking there will be a time where the act of creation won't be such an anxious experience but as I come back to the computer time and time again I am finding that there is no such relief.

I decided that I would use this blog post to put words down on the page and that hopefully through this process I would free up some space in my brain so that I could get down to the nitty-gritty of the work.

What I find interesting is that on the way here to the library, I had two ideas for stories that I could be trying to work out but now that I am here and in front of the computer I am having difficulty stringing one word in front of another. I don't use the word "block" because I don't honestly believe in it.

There is working the pump outwards (creating new work) and there is priming the pump (reading, going for walks, sitting by the river) and those are honestly the only two real modes I know. I am either doing things to prep for that outward flow of ideas or I am creating. Right now, I think I'm just a little bit drained from all of my commitments and I need to prime the pump. So maybe I will read another short story and then come back to the page.

The outdoors is calling me. The evening sun is drooping lower in the western sky, the light is softening and the wind has picked up and is blowing the ash tree outside the window so that it sends cascades of light around the room like a disco ball. I will have to go outside and see if the wind of inspiration won't blow through me and fill me like an empty vessel so that I can breathe and let the words find their way to the page.