| Title | SHA |
|---|---|
What is more terrifying than putting the pen to paper? To try to put to form what are only ideas within your mind? Now, to write something with absolutely no ideas in your head, that is true bliss; you spin a spider’s web without a single thread, creating a universe not from your mind but from your fingers.
But when you have an ounce of a notion, half an idea, a nugget of insight – then you are caught in a bind. Will you write? Will you face this monster? “Just put it down!” you say, but you know it is not so easy. Most production is not limited by a lack of creativity but by a lack of courage – you must admit to this. The tiniest nut can blossom into the grandest oak, yes, but it can also shrivel up and die its death beneath the earth.
But a giving tree is not the only option and we all know it is far from likely. Instead, when you plant your seed in the soil of the writing, you will find one of two things. You will either become more lost in the labyrinth, all the recoiling and fighting only making the vines of confusion bind your neck more tightly, or you will be able to hold this idea in your hands and shape it with your words. How repugnant! Your little notion will be revealed to be so insignificant, so trite, that it was never worth the effort of putting together paragraphs. You will wipe away the cloud of uncertainty from your view and your idée fixe will be revealed to be a child’s interest. Instead of a noble insight, you will be left alone with your stupid words and your savage mind.
In both cases, the futility of your struggle against the pain of the world is exposed. “Harrumph,” you sigh. Or at least, in my mind, in my words, you sigh.
If your writing leads to only more confusion, how will you cope? The act of creation, that which separates you from the beast, has failed to save you. Even though you have worked the idea in your head, you are only more lost in the cave. Certainly someone wiser, stronger could have toyed with your grand idea as if it were a child’s set of wooden blocks. Instead, you have labored over the concrete and rebar of your idea, yet you have reached no closer to the sky.
And what if you put together the words and you see it was simple all along. Have you bastardized your subject? You’ve taken the pain of unrequited love, the joy of friendship, the ties of family and spat them onto a grimy page. Certainly – and this is something that you know for certain – you could never have captured the depth of the beautiful and lofty things, but your completed work lies before you. Instead, you have debased something holy. In your hubris, you have sinned against life itself. What did you think would happen when you did this? Did you think you would metamorphasize into some grand creator, some seamstress of celestial beauty? No, only destruction abounds. You have laid waste to the one thing you hold dear: your own life and your frightful grasp on it.
Dear God, leave it locked away! Dear God, only pain can follow from this! Dear God, forgive me! Dear God!