The Creative Spark is Only the Start

Photo by Jonas Kaiser on Unsplash

FLASH! That little singularity of inspiration Big Bangs its way into reality. A tidal wave across the synapses at 2 AM just when you thought you’d be spooning Morpheus your creativity dealing meth-muse kicks in the front door and says,

“Not tonight baby. Brew the morning coffee now, cuz we’re surfing this flash fire whether you like it or not.”Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

And that’s the easy part, a sleepless night riding that potential across your nitro imagination’s light speed neuron samba. Then early in the morning rubbing tired eyes and trying to hover the cobwebs out of your brain there sits before you the dead open space of all that night’s former potentiality in the form of a corpse white blank page.

You know what comes next, a still born kiss off to your muse or the jack hammers, scaffolding, concrete mixers, the pounding, thrashing, scraping, hands in the air despair job site jitters, until bloody fingers cradle this far distant mutant relative of that Big Bang flash that slapped you into insomnia the night before.

“person lying on bed” by elizabeth lies on Unsplash

Then it’s all about dusting off the ruble and seeing only lead. Four revisions in and you curse that flash, you curse the twisted mutant it’s become, and curse a universe that turned an arson loose on your brain and soul with so much hope and then dumped you so low in self-doubt that you would gladly take Abraham’s attempted murder all the way with this bastard mutant flash.

The parental instincts won’t let you off the hook so easy though. That little flash that cinched your heart and sucked itself out of your chest and into a life on the page has your eyes, has your spirit, has your tongue, your need to speak. And it is a turbo charged thoroughbred cheetah that is smashing the starting blocks to pieces in it’s desire to run. And you will let it. Let it run before the billions of indifferent cyber-eyes who click past disdainfully to the next Beiber toothpaste ad until your tired and sad mutant flash returns to your lap and stares up at you with pleading dismay and asks,

“Why didn’t they notice?” Helping each other write better.

The Creative Spark is Only the Start was originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.