A room.
Suddenly, the room appeared out of the nothingness of thought and time, as if it had heard your call. The insatiable desire of writers, searching, searching, for ideas, a vision, anything to propel themselves forward into a story. Approaching the room, you hope beyond hope that its contents will give you an inkling of what to put down on the daunting, blank, white paper. But how to get in? There wasn’t a door, window or any crack or crevice showing. As if reading your mind, a door appears. Just like the room, you do not know where it came from or how. The doorknob, a curious thing, looked as if it had once been a glass ball that had been shattered then glued back together with gold, silver, and ink. You reach for the doorknob, then you hesitate. As your hand wavers over the alluring doorknob, a torrent of questioning thoughts flood your brain. Will what I see inside even be good? How did this simply appear out of nowhere? The worst being, and if I go in, will I be able to get out?
Then, steeling yourself against all doubt, you grab the doorknob, preparing to throw open the door, throwing all caution to the winds, then you pause again. Wait, wait, wait. I don’t even know what’s in there. Too many deaths are caused by rash, unplanned actions. After what happened last time, I have to be careful. A realization hits you at this thought – But am I even in the real, material world now? Where am I? But then again, there’s that hunger, a hankering for ideas, ideas to put in motion and bring alive for readers on the page. You need to get in that room. To stay ignorant of the contents within the room is madness.
But you have that feeling of doubt again, intensified now to a premonition of imminent disaster. However, you are decided now, as every writer should be. You have determined what must be done, and that is opening. The. Door. With an almost palpable feeling of tension in the air, an almost audible hum in your ears, the feeling of many eyes watching you in the dim nothingness, you slowly…very slowly…pull…open…the…door-just a crack. Immediately you are swallowed up in a tornado of words, phrases, and random…stuff. The whole of your vision is obscured by smoke, flotsam and jetsam, the air smelling of cordite. A total snafu.
Through the maddening crowd of the linguistic world incarnate, you drift. The word obsequious grovels, whimpering at your feet. Flamboyant saunters by, leopard skin coat, rhinestone rings and all. The creative genius of the composer and the poo poo poo of the musicians floats by, spewing music notes, and then disappearing from your view.
As you wade through the mire, a sign on the side of the room comes into view, hazy but discernible as a white square with black lettering. You can’t make out the lettering, even as you get closer and closer to the sign. Why can’t I read that sign? Finally, as you nearly press your nose up against the wall of the room, the words become readable. Eschew Obfuscation. Well that’s very helpful.
Then there is the random…stuff-scraps of paper balled up and torn, all covered with writing. The discarded work of writers around the world, you realize as you pick up one and read, “John went to school today. He came home. He died.” What a morbid little story. You pick up another scrap and read, “Oh, it’s a case of ‘they think I’ll think that they’ll do A, so they’ll do B because I wouldn’t think they’d think of that but then because I might think I know what they’re thinking they’ll do A after all because I wouldn’t think they’d think that way…” Wow, John Flanagan must have thrown this away and then decided to put in his book and have it published.
You notice now that as the whirlwind of debris slows down to mere tropical storm winds of 50 miles an hour, that some of the pieces of paper with writing on them are moving all by themselves, against the wind and along meandering courses through the other refuse. “Four score and seven years ago…,” marches by erect, determined visage peering through the flying debris. Abraham Lincoln! “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,” stays at the edge of the tornado, slightly sinister in appearance and going the opposite way of the winds and disrupting the course of the non-animate words and pieces of paper. George Orwell! Then you realize that maybe the more impactful and famous quotes survive and have a kind of soul given to them by all the people that have read and heard them over the years. They represent the immortality of great writing. The ultimate achievement for all writers.
Wait, I have an idea! I know what to write about! All at once the hurricane stops. The scraps of paper filled with the writing of writers, both great and terrible, disappears. The sudden silence is deafening.
You shut the door of the unexplainable room; its true contents still a mystery, and drift off in a daze, barely able to comprehend what has happened, but elated because of the idea, the beautiful idea that has come to you simply due to opening the door of that transcendent room a crack. Sometimes, all it takes to get an idea is a little craziness and bad ideas to give you one of your own, that idea that you will cherish and develop.
The darkness disappears and the blank sheet of paper comes in to focus. A mere trip inside your head was all that you needed. You always had it in you. Under the false impression of writer’s block, you have lived for too long.
You sit down and begin to write.