I don’t want to write today. I mean, I do but really I don’t. I can’t think clearly and there hasn’t been even a single moment of quiet since I woke up this morning. I’ve learned to do many things through noise and chaos, but thinking creatively just isn’t one of them. I feel like it’s all stuck in my head and I can’t get the words from mind to page. There are so many ideas swirling around that my internal chaos feels reminiscent of my house on a typical day. How do I slow it down, think it through and somehow let it out in a controlled flow?
Even a raging torrent seems preferable to an intermittent drip. Click To TweetTo find the discipline to put the words down everyday, even when I don’t want to. To carve out the minutes if not the hours where I won’t be interrupted. That doesn’t exist at my house. If they are conscious, there is noise. I used to be able to block it out but today I can’t. My fingers vibrate with frustration, the untold stories and unspoken thoughts poised until they collapse in resignation. I try so hard to birth them before the labor stalls and they pass away into the void.
This muse I serve, is a hard master. At times I wish the words would just go away. I want to leave them on the side of road and drive away unburdened. But they follow me, in quiet moments in the car or between lines of the book I try to read in the moments before I fall asleep. Single phrases from a conversation, a scripture, a podcast, even my own words uttered with intention or anger bring me full stop.
The seed is planted and I am half agony half hope, as Austen said, because I know the anger, and grief the creative process brings. Creating always does. Consuming is pure pleasure but without lasting satisfaction. Only in creation do we find sustaining purpose.
Consuming is pure pleasure but without lasting satisfaction. Only in creation do we find sustaining purpose. Click To TweetSo I take my tidbits and scraps, set them aside again, returning later hoping the coals will still be smoldering. I fuel the spark with stolen moments and desperate typing at the speed of tiny feet.
Sometimes it feels pointless, as though I am trying to hold back the tide to protect my sand castles. Whether it is wisdom or folly I return to the page and keyboard again and again. I would more easily amputate a limb than find a way to remove the words. So instead I tap away in seeming futility. If I can’t make them stop, then I must do the hard work to transplant them.
Amen! I always come back to John 1:1! A reminder that Jesus is the word made flesh but also a reminder that some of us are gifted with words to share Gods message in the world. I’m in the 6 spot this week.