Starting to write

How to begin? The question shouts from the blank page. The mind may also be blank, or it may be glinting with ideas and images, blinding in the way the sun’s reflection obscures vision while driving east in the morning or west in the late afternoon, especially when the windshield is streaked with dew or dust. You lower the window visor or salute hand to forehead. You fumble for sunglasses and put them on. Now there’s just the road ahead, stretching out flat.

You pick up the pen or put fingers to the keyboard. The mind numbs, then chatter begins: there are already too many blogs, an abundance of books. Who needs yours? You think of deadlines to meet, calls to make, dishes to do, a dog to bathe. You’ve heard it all before, so you silence the chatter, slapping it away as you would a mosquito, and missing. His buzzing annoys. You quickly type “How to begin?” There. You’ve marred the page. Now what about caffeine? Coffee or tea? You become the mosquito, darting here, landing there. A pot of tea, trip to the bathroom. You circle back to the target. Two paragraphs in there’s a pulsing in your temple—that body awareness. You breathe deeply and smooth the keys, feeling your fingertips, their bulbous bounciness against the concave plastic.

You have so much to tell. The TED videos you watched online this week: Ken Robinson’s humorous and dead-on talk about how schools kill creativity, Jill Bolte Taylor’s passionate story about her stroke of insight. A revisiting of Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts” based on Raymond Carver stories and the Carver extras sandwiched with the DVD. Your own wrestling with creative process, with reclaiming joy. Conversations with friends and strangers. Work unfinished in the studio. Hand goes to head again, this time as the Thinker. You see clearly the road you want to travel. Miles to go.

See you there!

Christine Walker

© Christine Walker 2008. All rights reserved.