Owls and Orchids

image from http://www.redletterbelievers.com

“Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea… and ideas are bulletproof.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

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For over a week now I haven’t been able to blog. My laptop had picked up some malware and it wouldn’t let me log on. It’s been frustrating to put it mildly. A simple job which I was told would take and hour and a half took the entire week, All those beautiful bright thoughts, that glittering inspiration which felt like a tingling in my fingers, just waiting for me to get them onto the page were stuck there, somewhere inside my head.

When I tried to write them down they seemed to become trapped in some mystical never-land and before I was past the first sentence they had become lost in a quagmire of sluggish thoughts, firmly swallowed by a thought eating monster who would refuse to let them out. I felt like a still pond  when someone drops a pebble into it, the ripples spread out but the surface is barely affected and soon returns to stillness,

By the time I  got my, allegedly fixed laptop back I had hit an awful blank wall. Nothing, but nothing wanted to come out. All that inspiration seemed to have been gobbled up in the despair of not getting those bright ideas onto ‘paper’. From a place where I had so many ideas waiting to burst out of me I reached a place where there was an arid desert – a nothingness where no ideas wanted to take root.

image from http://www.flickr.com

“Ideas are like legs: what good are they if you can’t run with them, or spread them?”
― Jarod Kintz, The Days of Yay are Here! Wake Me Up When They’re Over.

I have a multitude of beautiful photos I’ve recently taken, and those I’ll share soon. The stories, well, I’m hoping they return once I start writing again. That’s my hope and plan. A slow trickle to begin with, like a slowly moving stream. It slowly meanders along making its way from the source to the river and then the ocean, carrying everything along with it. As it moves along it picks up little bits and pieces and carries them with it making it more than it was before.

Then, when the time is right, and my idea guzzling monster has fed well and decides to leave me for fresher pastures, I’m hoping that the bright scintillating plethora of ideas will come flooding back. They may not be the same ones, in fact they most probably won’t be, but they will be stories which want and need to be told.

I’m trying to be gentle with myself. The creative process cannot be forced. It either is or it isn’t and the difference can be felt. I don’t want to fill a ‘page’ with the nonsensical, a space-filling nothingness just to say, “Hey I’m here, I really can’t say anything but I want to say I’ve posted something today.” Which is really just a vain plea to say “Please don’t forget me, I really want your ‘likes’ and following and I just want to remind you not to forget me”.

I know the experts say regular posting builds a following, but I would rather post something meaningful, at least to me and hopefully my followers  than what feels like filling up empty space with ‘white noise’. (Have you ever seen that movies? It’s frightening because of the possibilities).

I want my river of ideas flowing with the magic and mystery of spirits and undines, sylphs and sprites to bring mystical and wondrous delight to the reader.

image from http://www.nipic.com

“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.”    ― John F. Kennedy

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This then is my feast or famine. It is a simple arid desert of nothingness of ideas, a slowly moving stream of  a budding flow of inspiration  and then a beautiful rushing river of creative wonders, just tumbling over one another to get out.

So I wondered, what is your inspiration?  How would you describe your feast or famine of ideas?  How do you get past that awful “writer’s block”.  There – I’ve said the dreaded words. They weren’t too difficult after all – it’s simply what they mean which is so awful.

May you always have bright ideas to fill your page.

“Dare to dream! If you did not have the capability to make your wildest wishes come true, your mind would not have the capacity to conjure such ideas in the first place. There is no limitation on what you can potentially achieve, except for the limitation you choose to impose on your own imagination. What you believe to be possible will always come to pass – to the extent that you deem it possible. It really is as simple as that.”
― Anthon St. Maarten.

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Blessings.   Susan x