MMWUC for September 3, 2007

EXERCISE: A paunchy, nude writer, already in the room when the students took their seats, stands hunched behind the lectern. The writer taps the keys on his laptop with a measured pace of a metronome. An alarm buzzes. He flushes and stops typing, and then gazes at the silent students who teeter with anticipation. The writer grasps a blue string between two chubby fingers stained purple from a half-eaten plum donut oozing onto the lectern. The string is attached to a weight on a table. He pulls. His thin lips create an O; his eyes squint in anticipation. The weight doesn't move. Wrapping the string around his large hand, he pulls harder. The weight moves until the writer allows the string to slacken. He releases a sigh of resignation. "Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax." He waits. Barely perceptible movement occurs on the podium. "Open your eyes." He tugs the string, now labeled inertia, and it snaps. The weight, labeled ideas, is out of his reach. "For the next ten minutes, write from the protagonists POV, 'My preconceived notions failed me when....'"

MUSINGS: A delicate balance exists between crystallizing an idea in your mind and overcoming the inertia to get it on paper versus flying along at breakneck speed to capture the essence of an idea and snapping the train of thought in the process. I've been on both plains of existence. While it is nice to muse about your idea until it rises like a soufflé, always carry pen and paper with you (car, office, plane, bathroom, bordello, doctor's office, etc.), because you never know when it is time to capture an idea whether it has finally risen or the idea flies by like a fleeting hummingbird that must be capture or lost.

See...I told you it was hot here.