Facts & Arguments is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Sitting at my desk, staring at the blinking cursor on a blank screen, looking for inspiration. Waiting for a tiny bubble of an idea to wriggle out of the muck and float to the surface. Fingers on the keyboard, alert, poised, ready to capture the little thing before it – POP! – vanishes.
People always ask, where do you get your ideas? If I knew that, I'd visit more often.
They're out there – somewhere. Riding the breeze. Great swirling clouds of them, passing through us like radio waves, until one wayward signal finds an open mind tuned to precisely the right frequency and the music begins.
Twenty minutes pass.
My radio is broken.
The whole process is a mystery.
Some ideas arrive uninvited in a flash that hits like a knockout punch. Fully formed, every detail in place. All that remains is to get up off the floor and put it down on paper. Other times, they hide behind the door with the squeaky hinges. Or inside a slab of granite, and everything that isn't has to be chipped away to discover what is.
They come in dreams, while walking through the park, soaking in the tub, talking with a friend or are overheard in a restaurant.
Then there are days such as today.
I imagine donning a red hunting tunic, lacing up leather riding boots, saddling a horse, releasing the hounds and hunting one down. Galloping over the hills, through the marshes. Eventually cornering the exhausted beast and letting the dogs tear it to pieces. Soon, the lifeless trophy will be stuffed and mounted on the wall over my firepla–
Ugh! What a horrible thought. (Beautiful writing will not save an ugly idea.)
Every artist – writer, painter, sculptor, musician – faces the tyranny of the blank page. It's not easy reaching into the sky every day and pulling down something worthwhile. Some days the hands come down empty.
One hour passes.
My muse has abandoned me. Tired of being ignored, of having her gifts rejected, the fickle nymph has run off with another writer. Someone younger, more trusting. Someone who listens to her suggestions, takes her advice, indulges her annoying habit of starting work at 3 a.m.
I hear her singing as she drags her suitcase to the door: "R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Find out what it means to me." I'd apologize, promise to change my ways, but it's too late. "Just a little bit. Just a little bit."
Time to hang up my pencil, go play shuffleboard at the Legion with all the other hacks who've found themselves on the wrong side of their best-before-date. Their wells run dry. Spark fizzled. Bubbles burst. Toast toasted. Stash of clichés, exhausted.
Why do I do this? Ego, certainly: I'd like to believe that people find my stories interesting. And craft: The pure joy of putting words on the page that create pictures in readers' minds.
Ninety minutes.
Check the reject file – my bulging folder of unfinished ideas. Scraps of vaguely sketched characters in hazy settings searching for a plot with a decent ending. Perhaps today one of the rejects will look more appealing.
No. Recycling plastic is responsible. Recycling old ideas is pathetic.
I put Bill Frisell on the CD player. Turn off the nagging critic in my head, hit play, listen to free jazz and type.
Forty-two minutes later I have 567 words of abstract gibberish. Not one that couldn't be improved with two more keystrokes: Command. Delete.
A pair of squirrels are perched in the tree outside my window staring at me staring at them.
New ideas are as delicate as newborn babies. They must be treated gently. Nurtured, given time to develop. Freedom to live in the imaginary forest, racing from tree to tree, nipping at each others' tails. And when the time is right, to bring a squeaky litter of tiny new ideas into the nest. Fragile and helpless, full of mischief and promise.
The writer is just a tool. An idea's way of filling the nest with more ideas.
I open a book of poetry at random hoping one line might spark a thought that could grow into a concept and be fleshed out into 2,000 words of narrative brilliance.
A catalyst is all I need.
It doesn't have to be a full sentence. A phrase would do. A word. Even a letter. Such as a Q: A chubby puppy of a letter, wagging its little tail, waiting impatiently for a pat on the head. Ks are too aggressive. Armour-clad knights standing erect with a broadsword in one hand, dagger in the other. X is an hourglass, a nagging reminder of time running out. G? Now, there's a letter that knows how to have a good time. A wide open bowl with a diving board balanced over the pool, just waiting for little punctuation marks to somersault into the deep end.
Three hours.
The door opens. My wife walks in, looks at me in a way that reminds me of my boyhood dog standing in front of her empty food bowl. Woeful brown eyes staring at me. Pleading. Eyebrows pinched into a crinkle of pain, hunger and suffering.
"It's after 6," she says. "Aren't you going to cook dinner?"
My mind was so far away I could have mailed home a postcard.
"Oh!" she says, "Am I interrupting something?"
Nothing important.
Colin Thornton lives in Shediac, N.B.