My Writer’s Mind is a Terrarium

Ideas for stories littered my mind since I was in the third grade. Short stories filled my laptops’ memories since I was twelve. For seven years there was always a work-in-progress in my mind and on a document on whatever writing platform I was primarily using at the time. There were many notebooks that I actually wrote in and filled. Writing wasn’t easy but I got better over time because I worked the muscle constantly. My mind was like a forest within my skull, made up of ideas, plots, characters, and the naturophilia was real.

My writer’s mind, if it were to be physically represented, would be an open glass-bowl terrarium. At its best, it is full of lush green life that is mostly self-sustaining. All that it needs is some sunshine and mist.

Those little succulents represent the different parts of the stories and articles that come to mind that grow and grow until they start spilling out of the bowl. I have to write in order to trim back the overgrowth and plant the trimmings in their own planters to grow them. The cute little plants required very little external input to thrive. More and more kept popping up and growing. My mind was full and I was more than willing to let it thrive.

That mini-forest abruptly turned into a desert a few years ago. The climate changed. All of my minds’ succulents went dormant, some died away completely. It happened without warning. I tried to force new growth but too much water is bad too. Sometimes there were spurts of growth and I’ve had to replant some ideas here and there. Hope grows with them, but it dies out with them too.

There’s something to be said about the psychological effects of college and nursing school, of breathing school air 24/7 for four years. The prompts and the books on writing didn’t help me. My brain only likes very particular things and I suppose I don’t know it well enough to predict what will inspire the next spout of creativity.

I wrote on Medium in 2020 for a few months. Instead of fiction, I wrote articles that seemed to please the website’s desires. I also wrote some poetry, mainly haikus, because that was the easiest thing for me to do to keep the creativity going.

(There were little flowers in my mind’s terrarium, pretty and colorful but small and fragile.)

Little ideas, little plants, have begun to sprout again. It started in October with a story called “Midnight Candy”. I didn’t write again until December, but I wrote quite a bit last month. I’ve written quite a bit this month so far as well.

The succulents are growing again. They’re hesitantly blossoming in my mind’s terrarium and hope is growing with them. I’m careful about pushing too hard or pushing too little. I’m desperate for this New Spring to last because it’s making me feel just a little bit better every day. I don’t know how to take care of plants in all honesty, but if I can figure it out I’ll do everything I can to keep this going.

Once again, my writer’s mind is an open glass bowl terrarium, lush green life slowly growing.