The Wordless Writer's Worthless Hours

A writer walks across a field and suddenly a flash of lightening strikes them: I want to write is the only thing that remains in their mind after the shock fades. 

Their spine tingles a little with the electric snap, and their neck feels stiff. No one else around them seems to feel it. No one else seems to notice that they have come to an abrupt halt midfield. But there it is, clear as day, astounding as the clear sky above: I want to write. 

 

They leave the field, not caring which it is; soccer, football, or wheat. They leave the field, and they drive home. 

The shock seems to be the only thing that matters. They can feel it flowing through their veins, pulsating in the back of their skull. Word, words, words, they course through the awakened writer; their brain, their hands, their heart. 

Every word the world is wrapped in is suddenly at their disposal. 

 

Word. Words. Words. They flicker on their laptop's screen; writing, then erasing.

After a while their hands no longer shake. After a while their eyes become tired. Their spine aches from sitting hunched in the kitchen chair. Soon their hands start to tremble; the writer probably hasn't eaten since noon. 

They eat a quick amount of nothing. It doesn't matter what goes in their body, unless its books to fill their mind or vocabulary snacks to sink their teeth into. They browse dictionaries or an online thesaurus, glowing on their face like a fridge, searching it for something to fill themselves with.

 

Their eyes look back at the page. There is nothing on it for them to read.

The darker it gets, the brighter their screen seems to glow; words fizzle and flounder, unattainably there in the bright white page. They burn like on the sun's scorching surface. The writer blots them out as they try to grasp at the vapor before the words sizzle away and all that's left is water marks, like their dusty laptop screen.

Probably the writer will not write anything that matters that night. Their brain is tired and clumsy, and their heart is on repeat. (I want to write, it says. I know, the writer whispers.) 

 

After hours of typing and trying, they grab their laptop, and they drive back to the field. 

There, in the cold, in the same spot where the need to write struck them, the writer sits under the stars and lets their laptop glow on their face. 

The people are gone. It is only the writer and the stars now, the writer and the stars and a gaping desire within them to write something down. 

But, after hours of trying, the writer realizes that there is nothing to say. So, they close their screen just to open it again. The light of their laptop pulsates in their tired eyes, pouring its white vacancy into them. 

They realize that they are no longer looking at the screen. It is more like it is looking at them, trying to figure them out, trying to decide why they stay so long when they have nothing to say. 

 

The glow fills the writer through their pupils, like the morning sun on white sheets; it fills the writer up and smooths them out, softening all their crinkles, every wrinkle, every fold. 

 

The white page peers at them. 

 

I want to write, the writer says. 

 

Only after the screen closes its eyes and goes to sleep does the writer at last go to bed, thinking as they fall asleep about how much they'd rather be writing, and how much they might say.

The desire to write doesn't always come with the words. But the yearning makes it ache sometimes. It drains out your hours and your sleep; it makes you forget to eat sometimes. The writer spends these worthless hours writing worthless things. Words, words, words sometimes lead to pages. But there is only one thing of value on the laptops tattooed face on nights like these: Words, paragraphs, pages, filled with every word the world is wrapped in; all new ways to say with the attainable alphabet how much the writer wants to write.

 

So, as the sleepy writer slumbers, the heat fades from the tired laptop, and the books on the shelves whisper in their sleep, like distant owls in the night. The cat snores softly. 

The desire doesn't sleep, though. It is the first thing on their mind when they awake. 

I myself have spent endless hours in that field, searching for the words like a lost wifi connection and looking out for lightning, hoping that the flash will strike, and I'll be able to write at last. 

Writing in the Rain

Everyone has got their muse. Mine just happens to be the rain. 

 

 

 

I don't know how this really started. I just know that one day I convinced myself that all the best things I'd ever written happened on rainy days. 

Over time, I have come to rely on it for that; that when the rain comes, the scene will get written, the chapter completed, writer's-block beaten. 

 

Occasionally something good will come to me on a sunny day, but it takes a dedicated kind of focus and a calmness of the mind to bring me there. That being said, all my sunny-day-scenes tend to feel more peaceful, sometimes sad. Rarely are they of the same kind of impact or vitality as the things I write when it rains. 

 

Writing in the rain has its upsides and its downsides. It's both erratic, and reliable. 

When it doesn't rain for weeks on end, I feel as desperate for it as the earth around me. I feel parched, dried up in my creativity, like the thirsty plant shrivels. 

And yet, when the clouds come over me, I know that today I may write again. It always rains eventually, and when the drought ends, so does my writer's block. 

 

Over the years, the metaphor has only become more perfect. How sporadic rain can be. Just like inspiration, it sometimes comes when you least expect it, or don't want it at all; when you have prior engagements and you have to chose to either duck-out and feel guilty for missing life, or miss out and feel regret for the words that might have been written. Inspiration waits for no one. And the storms don't plan their schedule around me.

And so, I plan around it, when I can. I look at the weather forecast and make excuses on days when I want to slip away; do nothing but listen to the tap of the rain on my window and the click of my quick fingers typing, nothing but cross empty pages, showering them with curled letters, little dotted words that drizzle and then drench into paragraphs.

Ah, yes: the rain, it comes like a river. 

But then there was a day this summer when it rained so much, buckets filled and spewed over, saplings drowned, every dirty window for miles was washed clean, and all I could do was sit and look, and watch the rain fall. I don't think I wrote more than a page that day. 

 

 

 

 

I don't know what the lesson here is, other than that maybe there's a balance to everything. Just like words don't always come when it rains; just like how, a few weeks after that rainy day on which nothing was written, I wrote the best scene I'd written all summer on a hot humid day; in the same way that long busy winters always give way to rich and rain-full summers in which so much is written, writing comes with ups and downs. 

Rain and sun, inspiration, depression. Sometimes it rains, and words fall like a waterfall. Sometimes there are other things to do, like to sit and simply watch the rain fall. 

 

When it comes down to it, I'm a writer on rainy days and on sunny ones; I'm a writer in winter, and in summer, whether I'm writing or not. 

For all of these things are part of it, you write, and you live, and then sometimes you write some more. And occasionally, all it takes to be a writer is to sit and listen to the rain fall and let your keyboard be still.

 

 

 

Writing When You're in a Hurry

How to Write When You're a Whirlwind

A Whirlwind: A chaotic rush, fast approaching, swiftly passing, never lasting.

How can you write in the midst of a drought when writing for you feels like a whirlwind? How can you write when you climb your hill in expectation, let lose your hair, but find no breeze to lift you?

And still the wind is on your mind. You're too aware of your own breath when its calm; too aware of the limitations of your own existence.

Writing is like a turbulence of words that overcomes you; but you, with your butterfly net, you who puts out buckets and basins to collect it when it falls, catch so little of it. You find that the wind cannot be caught in nets; find that still water is too tranquil, too unlike rain, far too tamed by your small vessel to offer much inspiration.

  

You may wander the fields afterwards, once the storm has spent itself. You look for lost treasures in the tillage, things you missed that the earth didn't already take from you. But if there are seeds in the earth, maybe the storm will make way for things to grow.

They grow in the calm, even when you're not looking, even less when you do (you cannot watch a sapling sprout in your slow-human-seconds). But did you plant the right seeds?

Let us dig and find out if your seeds have what it takes.

You planted white things; planted paper; planted sleeplessness; planted an alphabet by the keys of an old typewriter. You planted the books you once read, now decomposed and rotted in half-remembered, dirt-stained passages. You planted half formed visions, hoping that they'd grow. You planted feelings, also half-forgotten because you never wrote them down. You planted patience, such small simple seeds, the whirlwind could take them, and you'd decide you do not need them (you'd rather watch for storms). You planted watering cans with rusted spouts with which to do the watering (how counterproductive writers are). You planted faulty scales with which to measure the greatness of your rain-water because you wondered once how much rain it takes to make a pond, a lake, an ocean. (How many words it takes to write a book, I've always wondered. But who has ever counted?)

You may regret ever taking up gardening as you sit there, with dirt on your knees and in your finger nails, with leaves in your hair still damp from the last rain.

But then you find one pretty seed in the earth, already sprouting roots, and you know: this one craves, this one desires, this one hopes. Seeds turn into trees sometimes, and you can feel it by the determination of its little roots that this one wants to grow; wants to know what it will be when it grows.

Trees take a long time to grow, so much longer than flowers. Trees turn into books sometimes; not just one, but hundreds, even thousands. How many words can trees hold on their pages, I wonder? More leaves than they've ever sprouted, surely.

You forget sometimes how much time it takes for trees to grow, that what you plant today won't grow until a great many tomorrows.

But how counterproductive writers can be when they doubt themselves; when they plant seeds just to dig them up again, forgetting that it takes so much more for things to grow than a planter, a gardener, a caretaker. Leave it in the dirt next time.

Next time, let the storm do the watering, but get up in the morning and water it some more. Seeds grow slower when you watch them, but people say that they like to be talked to.

You, you who writes in whirlwinds, you will talk to it sometimes, late at night when you can't stop thinking; when you put words to your own mind instead of paper, writing imaginary books in the space between waking and dreaming, because writing is so much harder when you're distracted by your wakefulness.

Books get written sometimes; out of paper, words, and things-once-read. Books get written, with patience, with doubt, and an untraceable craving, deeper than the pen can delve. The desire for books to exist, to write, to pass on stories, is as ancient as the once young sapling's wish to grow up to be a tree.

Books get written sometimes. But only if you give it time to grow.

So next time when you plant your garden, plant a little time.

Another Rainy Day

I am always growing as a writer. 

Every time I sit down to write, I find I am not the same writer I was before.

The process of growing is a frustrating one mainly because people do not change until the situation forces them to. 
It is usually only when we are forced to face new struggles and challenge new frustrations that we realize: the person we are now is not enough anymore. The person we were yesterday is not strong enough anymore. She is not smart enough, not wise enough or brave enough to face what life brings today, and so, she must become the person she needs to be tomorrow. 

I do not become a better writer by continuing to be the writer I was yesterday. I cannot always speak the same words or write the same scenes. I must always be changing. I must always be searching for something new. 
Yesterday is no longer enough to fill today, but the thrill of tomorrow might be. The thrill of knowing that there are always new words to learn, new things to experience, and new hurts to feel. The thrill of knowing that the future is always one day away and that each day offers a new chance to be better, stronger, wiser, braver. 

And though the person I was yesterday was not strong enough to face this, I know better now. 

And tomorrow will come despite whether or not I am ready.

With every new season, new lessons arise, and this summer I learned to not rely on the rain to give the words.
I love to write when it rains. But, in the draughts and the sunny days, in days spent locked up at jobs and at school as the rain thrums on the rooftops, on late rainy night when the words come like with each drop from the sky, how often did I stop to just listen to the rain? How often did I stop to enjoy them?

So, yesterday, when rain fell and streets flooded, it was time to leave the laptop behind. It was time to stop speaking, and go out and listen to the sound of the rain.

 

Send Me a Storm

This is probably the last thing I should be doing right now, yet, somehow, it needs to be the first. Updating my blog is at the bottom of the to do list, yet here I am. Writing.
This post currently has no title because I don't know what this is about yet, but I'm sure to find out shortly.
Some of you probably don't know this, but I'm in University now. I have my text books sitting next to me, on the desk in my dorm room. My roommate is currently out, and I am alone. And, aside from the ridiculously loud air-conditioning, all is still.

Today was a very busy and a very hot day. I hate hot days. They make me lazy and, quite frankly, they exhaust me. 
I miss the rain. Oh how I miss the rain. I miss dancing in the storm. Somehow admits the turmoil of thunder and rain your soul is just set free. All your worries wash away, and you are just a tiny drop in the eye of the storm. It's the most powerful form of therapy I know. To me there is nothing like a thunder storm to remind me who is really in control.
I think what I'm trying to say is. I feel like I'm losing control, and that scares me. I think, admits the homework and the stress of getting settled into this new stage of my life, I think I have forgotten why I'm here. I have forgotten who sent me and I have lost sight of what I came here to so eagerly pursue. 
So, I am here now, putting off my reading and the two papers I'm supposed to be writing, to remind myself. 
I am here because... well because this is all I want to do. They is all I can do! There is no other way to say it! No other way to do it! I am here because I have this nagging urge in my heart that won't be still. It is the storm inside my soul. I find peace in the storm, and I guess this is my storm. This rage, this passion, this hurricane. This brings me to life. Without it I am dead. Without it I am just a hot sunny day, and I hate hot sunny days. 
And now, I have come up with a title for this nameless post. As you can see I've called it, Send Me a Storm. Or, more precisely, Send Me THE Storm.

I didn't have a picture for this post, so I thought I'd share one of my favorite landscape pictures taken by none other than my Dad. 

Just looking at it makes me feel calm in the most tremendous way.

Check out more breathtaking landscapes of his here.

Word Conductor

I used to pretend I could read. I would open a book and invent a story, all the while telling my brother I was reading to him. When I was 6 years old, I learned how to read, for real this time. I was 8 when my Dad read The Hobbit to me for the first time. That same year I wrote my first story.
In the years that followed, I would reread The Hobbit again and again. I would also discover legions of other books. I fell in love with literature numberless times. I would find myself lost in a book more often than in reality. 
When I was 12 years old I started writing the novel that would become my greatest passion. That same year I won an award called the Future Novelist Merit Award. It was the moment my English teacher told me that I would be the next Tolkien that I realized this was all I wanted to be.
In the years that followed that aspiration never faltered. Just when I thought writers block had gotten the best of me I would stumble upon more passion to sustain me. Pages get caught in my hurricane. Pencils get shredded to the stub. Notebooks get inked. What once was blank and paper-thin is made bountiful enough to get lost in.
Then, everything changed, and as a result, I stopped writing.
My year away from writing changed my life completely. No pages were filled. My finger tips became unfamiliar with pencils. Words began to fall off pages. Sentences were left unfinished. And I, the girl that used to dance and breathe with words, I think she forgot how to feel. 
I searched for life in a lot of places. I looked for a substance that could fill a void. But I could not fill oceans with water droplets. I could not rage a storm without breathing. I could not fill pages without passion.
So, instead of writing about life, I started to write about death. Instead of writing about emotion, I learned to write about the pain of not feeling anything.
Somewhere in that fight, I heard his calling. I always wondered where this passion came from, and now I asked myself where it was that I had lost it. The Lord called out to me, and that was when I rediscovered my sustainer.  
This is my calling, and I am the listener. Now I have discovered that I cannot cease to fall in love with this aspiration. Plot holes have been filled with mountains. Writers block has been blown away by breezes, and the words have found me yet again.
My palms are stained with pencil. My finger tips are tinted with ink. They have called me book worm, but really I am the aspiration of a master novelist. These words are my addiction. These words tell me that I am still alive. These words, they are my catastrophe, and he is the conductor.