Saturday, July 5, 2008

Time to Write

Now is the time to write.

Now is the time to pick up your pen and touch its tip to your blank page.

Now is the time to set that flashing cursor to work filling your empty screen.

See the words take shape out of nothingness. Watch the once-paralyzing void vanish in a flood of words, thoughts and images.

Whatever yearns to find its way onto the page will do so if you allow it the freedom to travel the shortest distance imaginable -- from heart to hand to page.

Let your heart direct your hand.

You don't know what it is your heart cries out to express? Then let one word, any word, tumble onto the page. Then another. Then another.

It doesn't matter what those words are. They'll find their own rhythm and form. And if they don't end up being the right words, other words will replace them, in time.

For now, fill the void. With anything. Just fill it.

Do it. One word or one hundred. Place something on the page. Something. Anything.

Now, let those first words form a sentence, those first sentences form a paragraph and those first paragraphs cascade onto the page, one after the other, on the Muse Stream of free-flowing creativity.

That’s all writing is -- one word leading to the next, then to another. Then to another.

There. Now your page is no longer empty, your screen no longer blank.

You have written.

You have freed the words of your heart and taken the time to write.

Adapted from "Now Is the Time to Write III," in The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write.

Photo by Mark David Gerson: Yellowstone River, the largest undammed river in the lower 48 states, Yellowstone National Park

1 comment:

Derek Hambrick said...

Hi, Mark,

Thanks for the post. Good stuff and well conveyed.

Cheers,
Derek Hambrick