Sunday, December 21, 2014

When The Words Don't Come

I write a lot. Daily journaling, these small blog posts, and rather a lot of material for work. I like to think that my fluency is good and that I keep the words flowing.  Right up until the moment when nothing is coming to mind, when every word seems trite and every sentence belabored.

This past week I had four publication deadlines for work, a couple of reports, some careful messages to draft, and a reflection piece for a worship service. Not a stellar time for the muse to take a three-hour cruise to a deserted island.

It was a week of "Make it Work", suffering through the dis-ease, complicated by tech problems in the office- a dead printer/copier, and Sunday, a power outage knocking out my monitor.

And still hating most every word I wrote. Hours of thinking on the words, sitting down to write, typing out my babbles, then deleting at least two-thirds of it. I broke down and DID DISHES, hoping the different muscle movements might trigger my fingers into finding the right words.

Anywhere I could get someone else's input, I did so--admitting that things weren't going smoothly on my end. Thankfully, I work with some eloquent folks.

In the end, I hit all the deadlines. The reflection piece was half taken from something I typed up at 6:30 AM, and half from notes scrawled on a big sticky note between 10 and 11:30. It was not the most concise or the most enriching thing I have ever written or said, but neither was it cringe-inducing.

I'm looking forward to a few days of spreadsheets and filing and reading. Not especially glamorous, but an easier part of the brain.

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