Where does the writing come from?

The human brain is a wonderful and crazy thing.  (That’s another way of saying this blog is for the writing geeks like myself.)

I wrote a piece recently about how our daughter became ill and we rushed her to the ER. She had been ill for a couple of weeks, but her fever soon broke and in a short time was back home playing like nothing ever happened. 

I came up with the idea for the story, titled The Trip to the ER, and wrote the opening paragraph and then ran into a brick wall. I couldn’t figure out where the piece needed to go or what I wanted to say. It had no pulse, purpose or life. I came back later in the evening and it still went no where. I thought I knew what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t will it out of my gut.

I shut my laptop and went off to do something else. I came back the next day and still had nothing. I decided I’d put it aside and come back when I was ready. The piece sat on my laptop for months. I’d look at it, change a few words, and it would sit some more. 

I’d come back every few months, tinkering and seeing if anything changed, but I wasn’t feeling it. I debated deleting what I had written. It wasn’t going anywhere, why keep it? Why waste anymore time on it? I had a hunch though that it could be something different, something special. 

And then a few weeks ago, the piece started to come together. It was like a large dam had been broken inside of me, a few words started to come out and then a paragraph came and then the next and the next. In total, the piece sat for nine months as a few fuzzy paragraphs on a page, before my mad fifteen-minute dash turned it into an 821 word story.

The story proves to me once again for the millionth time that writing is hard work. I’ve long found it interesting how the brain pulls in information, closes off other areas until you end up with a completed piece. In the end, I was able to look back on an important moment in my wife’s and my life.

For me the piece helps put into focus one more time the power of faith and patience. God knows I could use a bucket load of faith and patience. I pray that God blesses me with both in the years to come.