Marc Mullo asked Cynthia Sharp:

Hi Cynthia, how are you? I must ask you, what do you do when your mind seems absolutely blank, yet full at the same time, with all of your other thoughts and emotions? I'm referring specifically to "writer's block", that is if there even is still such a thing for writers, bloggers like you and I? As far as I'm concerned, and you would probably agree, all writing come down to thoughts and emotions. :-)

Cynthia Sharp What a great question Marc, so Zen! Your own answer is like a meditation. I agree completely, that "all writing come down to thoughts and emotions." I feel like your question is a blog post in itself, a profound, paradoxical reflection that is a gift for other writers to reflect on. It's interesting too having read your meaningful poem in Poetic Portions and the beautiful way you discuss concern for the Earth combined with gentleness and respectfulness to others in your poetry collection. I tend to have one file I keep open all the time to gather random thoughts as they come to me and often those random thoughts are rough drafts of poems. Sometimes they are lines for a novel or an idea for a character or dialogue for a TV script. I leave that one big file open all day so I can type something in quickly if a thought comes in the middle of doing the dishes or getting ready to go out to tutor, so that all the thoughts and emotions can be captured as they happen, as much as is possible. I also bring a pen and paper when I go for walks because exercise, movement, fresh air and appreciating nature generate ideas and thoughts for me. Then, on days when I'm not sure where to start or feel like my mind is blank, I go through that big file of rough drafts, ideas, reactions, etc. and look for gems. If I see something that looks like a poem, I cut it out from the big file and give a new word file and try to polish it. I often go through the big file and look for themes like Meditations for Writers, which your post above seems to be and which is a new ebook I'm working on. A lot of my notes of encouragement to myself are meditations I may share with others. I use a day when I'm not sure where to start to organize the random recorded thoughts, polish, tweak, break them up into files of their own, etc. Some of that big file of everyday thoughts gets deleted if it keeps me caught in negative emotion or moved to film script dialogue, since that can be an outlet for intense thoughts. Some of the file just gets skipped over. I find it helpful to have a monthly deadline for a poetry column or a habit of posting something new once a month and when that deadline approaches, I scramble through my notes from the month to find something. Having deadlines, even ones I give myself, forces me to have to trust that something in my material will be good enough. I also find that reading both fiction and nonfiction gets me motivated to respond to the feelings and topics that I read and that leads to new poems, nonfiction blog posts or even writing I do just for myself, pretending to be a character from a book I just finished or making the cathartic scenes even more gentle because I love respectfulness and altruistic love between characters. I think you're totally right, that "all writing come down to thoughts and emotions," so if we record those as they move through us, somewhere in the midst, there's a start to a poem. Looking forward to reading your next works!

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