Removing a blockage with a rainbow moment….

Somehow I always forget that there will be an ‘end of the rainbow’ moment that motivates me. It happened yesterday, again on a bus. I have identified a pattern to these moments, they usually happen when I am travelling, passing fleeting scenarios and dipping into other people’s lives through conversation. I was so excited about my new idea that I found myself smiling at nothing at all. I felt lighter than I had in weeks and licked my lips at the thought of my favourite occupation – the planning stage.

So now I find myself on a metaphorical exercise bike once again, or a treadmill where the beginning is entrancing and almost easy, nothing set in stone, a flurry of ideas I can kick in the air, watching carelessly how they land for possibilities. Eventually I will have to pedal harder as I formalise the plan into character sketches and a plot. This is also fun, but in a more fixed way, sort of like mixing the mortar before a wall is built.

A week on Friday I will begin to write. I will probably have written some scenes and will still be brimming with ideas, my life full of imaginary friends as I embark on a journey that, at first, only I will be privy to in this world, but in the world of my story a whole alternative universe is forming as my characters go about their everyday lives. I’ll sit in coffee shops maybe on the tube, definitely in a bar and imagine how it would be for my main character, what they would feel. The steady planning continues, but now the real running hard begins to get the words onto the page.

I will be immersed. The feeling of being enveloped in my writing is as delicious as feeling blocked is frustrating. A the world turns, my story will evolve and I will grow as a person, delighted at my practice and learning that, after all, every cloud has a silver lining.