Strange Miracle

Think Tank #53

There’s nothing scarier than the threat of ‘running out of ideas.’

Usually it’s a remote fear, but sometimes, it comes scratching its way up to the surface.

The problem with this fear is that, when it strikes, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Scared that you’re gonna ‘run out of ideas’? Well, suddenly the doubt creeps in, and you’re stuck and stagnant without a single idea, and writing anything down is like torture, and then you’re depressed and ready to just throw in the towel.

It all comes down to mindset. Ideas are a dime a dozen. The world is full of them. You can go on a morning walk and have fifteen ideas come to you within thirty seconds. All you have to do is be receptive to them.

Pay attention to the language here. The ideas come to you. You need to be receptive to them.

You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘trust the process.’ It’s the easiest thing in the world to do, but writers are an arrogant bunch. We forget. We accomplish things that we didn’t think were possible, and then we look on that work with pride. We did that. And now we have to do it again.

That’s the worst attitude to have. You can’t do it again. The pride you feel when looking at your finished novel or play or collection of poetry is a similar pride to that which a mother feels when looking at her newborn child. She doesn’t know how she did that. It didn’t come from her. Well it did, but it didn’t come from her mind. She can’t just decide to do it again. She would have to go through the same process, wait the same nine months, and put her faith in that strange miracle that somehow manages to pull it all off, even when there’s so much that could go wrong.

If she’s not in charge, who is?