Some Of Your Best Writing Comes When You Can’t
Blank Screen, No Clue, Write It Down.
What to do when you sit in front of that screen be it on phone, tablet, or laptop and you haven’t got a damn clue what to write. Do you fight the good fight or retreat into binge-watching Netflix and think to yourself “tomorrow is another day”. Well, you can do that but it might be the same old thing tomorrow and God forbid the day after too.
Pull up your chair to the laptop and just write anything that comes to mind. Even write about your neighbour’s dog. The dratted dog that barks constantly, craps on your front path, and is a neighbourhood menace. Keep writing it all down and something will come. You may well end up with a fantastic piece on training your dog to behave perfectly and be loved by everyone.
And brainstorm, think about where you’ve been today. Who you have seen and talked with. Are there any nuggets to come out of those conversations in the street or over the garden fence. Something you could write down and let it grow. Sitting and watching people is one of my favourite things. I’m not a Peeping Tom or a nosey neighbour but sitting outside a cafe with coffee and watching the world go by can give a host of writing opportunities.
Ideas float all around us and it is for us to catch them. You can have inspiration in the garden or heaven forbid the toilet. I might add at this point I am not advocating taking your laptop into the toilet with you as a just in case measure. Accidents can and do happen. Best to play safely on that one.
There is gold in letting the mind meander through thought and thought can soon turn into an article, maybe a popular one at that. Our minds as writers live in the land of thoughts and it is for us to get the words out onto the screen or notebook.
Try to write something every day. Even if you don’t press the submit button you've written something down that you can refer back to and make something of later. And if you have a mind full of thoughts it’s best to write daily to ease those ideas out and then they are physically in the here.
So don’t sit and think “I have no clue”. You do have a clue in the form of just sitting at the screen and letting the thoughts come out in words. And the beauty of words is that they can be changed, added to and extended into something special.
And whilst writing this a new idea has popped into my mind.
Vee