writing inspiration | Words For Hire

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Today is the first official day of summer, an appropriate day to trade hard cover tomes of business and industry for deliciously just for fun paperbacks. This post is lovingly for all my writer friends who inspire and challenge me in every season. Grab your flip flops and come build sand castles with me for awhile.

Writers block had spread like some weird epidemic of creative flu. Suddenly pens were silenced and blogs languished untouched for days and weeks at a time. Gripped in the throes of my own angst I told myself we had matured, had outgrown the incessant need to publish and be read but deep down I wondered if I had infected the parasite into the space I had inhabited. The community that had fed my creative soul had vanished around me.

My writing life was as barren as the stark naked trees with icicles dripping from their limbs. My body felt heavy with ideas but I was unable to do more than store them away for future use. It was a long and desolate winter with an occasional breakthrough of creativity like the sun which hid for months and then shone brilliantly high in the sky reminding you that it was there behind the thick blanket of clouds, before it disappeared again.

And then as magically as the virus had struck there was a fresh bloom of posts dripping with intensity and raw emotions. The virus had stripped away the self doubt and left the bare and naked souls of the writer. Pens were no longer stilled and blogs were humming with the low thrum of activity like tourists descending upon a beach town for the season. The townies quietly blended into the background while the tourists explored with wide eyed curiosity. The community was abuzz with their chatter and questions about the local culture. The locals pretended not to care but our hopes were renewed. Could we recreate the magic of that first summer, would word spread beyond the borders of our small town? When the summer sun set would the tourists return to the fast paced motion of their lives and tuck away the visit to the small blogging village as a quaint little side trip?

Fueled by the visitors and the locals emerging from self-hibernation I allowed myself once again to be swept away on the waves of their creativity. I drank it in like one who had wandered in the desert unable to command the rocks to yield a droplet of life giving water. I drank until bloated fearful of letting a single drop escape me, inhaling and tasting the sweet nectar that suddenly was in abundance everywhere. But I did not return to my own shop, eating in secret fearful of being discovered and called out for my gluttony of the precious morsels that were plentiful in the space I had come to love. Tucked away in my corner I filled my baskets with the manna of inspiration, piling the storehouses for the inevitable winter.

When the doors of neighboring shops closed for the night I sat on their doorsteps inhaling the aroma of the day and the soft sounds of gentle laugher mixed with the gentle waves floating upward on the iridescent night sky. I had been here before and knew how quickly the lusty headiness of muse could evaporate. If held too tightly I would crush her fragile beauty so I cupped her gently accepting that she could and would fly off again when she chose. Muse is fragile but surprisingly strong in her will to come and go as it pleases. Even now as I try to distill her beauty into words I know that it may elude me causing my words to spin dizzily like the ranting of a woman gone mad. So I simply sit quietly enjoying the beauty of muse and her ability to come to each of us in her form and on her own terms. Together we, this community of writers who dare to hit the publish button, reflect a tapestry of shapes, sounds and colors more beautiful than any that would have been created by just one. I lean back against the sand thankful for this moment for I know that muse is fickle and fleeting and may soon simply dip beneath the moonlit sky once again out of my reach.

Before you leave the village be sure to check out a few neighboring shops:

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Invite the Muse to Tea (highcallingblogs.com)

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Regret clings to my soul like cobwebs in a dusty attic. It seems that all that is left of me are memories of what was as hope drains from my heart leaving me empty and lifeless. With head bowed and shoulders intent on greeting each other in sorrow, I sigh deeply and turn on the machine that taunts me as it boots up. Mindlessly I click on Twitter and my eyes capture a flicker, a quote that wraps around my chilled heart and shakes me from my coma of hopelessness.

@GrantThomson A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.- John Barrymore

I do not want to warm myself on chilly nights with fading memories of my past accomplishments playing like a scratched album with the needle stuck in the grooves. A small piece of my old fighting spirit rises to the surface and a longing to make new “bests” that are in the present and now. I fight through the fog that has enshrined me to bring my fingers to the keyboard defiantly tapping out words, ramblings that may or may not become sentences but determined nevertheless to find my way again to life. The fog holds on with a tight grip releasing vapors as I struggle to climb above it, to see the sun that I know exists above the dark clouds. A tiny spark emerges, barely enough to light the way but I focus on the pinprick of light and tap, tap, tap my way from the cave of darkness.

I tap like a madwoman, possessed by the journey, barely seeing, not thinking but suddenly with a fierce need a single minded mission to break free fro the prison of despair. I hear nothing but the tap, tap, tap slowly rising to a crescendo as I battle my way to the light. My furrowed brow is beaded with sweat from the effort of fighting against the enemy of my soul. Tap, tap, tap, shards of remembrance break through, memories of past effort. A tiny voice whispers and I strain to hear it. It does not have to be perfect, just do it.

I tap, tap, tap to drown out the ugly screams of fear as it tries in vain to beat back the flame that threatens to extinguish its presence. Then with racing heart and waning energy I see…the light. I open my eyes wide and drink in the blessed sight of the light gulping it hungrily as one who has wandered in without water in the desert for days on end.

I turn my face toward the warmth as a deep, throaty laugh passes through my parched lips. A tear slips down my cheek and slowly falls to the page, blurring the words that dragged me from the darkness that threatened to silence me forever. I am here and I am thankful.

Have you ever been gripped by discouragement? How did you work your way through?

Community, Inspiration and The Muse

140 Characters from Darkness to Light