Sunday, October 24, 2010

Insert Title Here

More than once, I have found myself wandering around a strange city thinking out my next blog post. I’ll notice something interesting across the street and begin to compose a few paragraphs in my head. Blog Think, as I call it, is always brilliant and witty, the prose never needs work, there are no comma splices, and were Pulitzer Prizes awarded for inspirational blog perfection, I would have won a dozen by now. Sadly, the problem with Blog Think is that it doesn’t have a recording device.

I started carrying around a leather bound notebook for those moments when I had finally created the perfect turn of phrase but ended up with pages of disjointed thoughts and no memory of what inspired them or how I could use them again. I briefly contemplated sticking a tape recorder in my purse for those moments but dismissed the notion because there was no space in my already bursting Roots bag. Despite several successful ventures, carrying around my laptop day after day became an exercise in masochism due to its weight and my now sore back.

Thus, I have been left with only the brief memory of genius to keep my blog warm at night. Mind readers on the street all know I was capable of fits of Kafka-esque brilliance but they were the only ones. Unless someone invents a way of recording my inner musings and transferring them to paper without any interference from me, I’m pretty much buggered in the writing department.

Writer’s block hounded me for months in New Zealand. I composed post after post while I wandered the damp streets of Auckland but was unable to command the words again when seated before my computer. I spent more time staring into space than I did tapping the keys.

In Sydney, I thought I had tracked down my muse and convinced her to stick around when she abandoned me at a typically inconvenient moment. I had dozens of stories to tell but was incapable of getting past the first sentence. I stared for hours at photos and remembered the wonderful memories behind each picture yet the second I thought to turn my musings into something more purposeful the words mocked me and disappeared like wraiths into the ether.

So instead of a witty tale about how Australia is a land of beaches I’m left with yet another post about writer’s block. Rather than sharing the rollicking good times I had with Sophie the Giraffe at Bondi Beach I am left contemplating why no one has invented a mind reading, self-typing computer to be sold at an affordable price at the local Mac store. Unfortunately, it looks like Blog Think and brilliance will only go hand in hand when there’s a telepathic shorthand expert around.

7 comments:

Corinne said...

Dude, I get Blog Think all the time. It's the basis of my delusion that I am a good writer. Perfect prose in the noggin, it all goes to pot at my fingertips.

Here's hoping you get over the writer's block. You're a fabulous writer anyway, so you'll find your inspiration!

Anonymous said...

That first photo is hilarious!

My suggestion is not to think of your next blog post at all. Try to live in the moment and think of what you're doing. In a rather Zen-like way, when you stop thinking of what you want to say, you might find it just comes to you when you least expect it...

Brenda said...

It will come back to you. I have to write things immediatly or I completely forget the funny things I was going to say.

BTW, I have a new URL in case you have not been finding me lately.

http://www.brendas-blog.com/

Anonymous said...

I love the first shot!

And ladyfi is right. It is something your father says often now as he forgets things frequently: think of something else and the thought(s) may come back to you.
merthyrmum

sprinkles said...

Sometimes I can't sleep so in the middle of the night I'll create a few posts in my head but I'm too lazy to get out of bed or turn the light on. When the light of day finally rolls around, I've forgotten everything. Or I'll kind of remember the basic gist of it but I can't seem to word it the way I did in the dead of night.

Unknown said...

Love the sign too!

Agree with LadyFi as well, just let it happen.

Karen M. Peterson said...

I need a Quick Quotes Quill for those moments of blog brilliance that I have no time or ability to record for myself.

If you don't get the Quick Quotes Quill reference, I will be sad.