Do you remember when I told you that you should keep a journal? The reason for that is to have something to look in when you are completely devoid of ideas.
Authors call this process "mining" their journals, because they try to find gold nugget ideas out of phrases or quotes they have written weeks, months or years ago. When you're facing a blank wall, the tendency of your brain is to relax and drift away unproductively.
With journals, you have words and expressions that you can associate with real, concrete events in your life, giving you a slight push towards actually writing something.
When I look at my journal, for example, I read "No matter what they tell us..." This is actually a line from a popular band when I was in high school, Boyzone. I didn't write it because I was enamored with the song, rather, it was a fitting line for what was going to happen three months after I wrote that line: our high school graduation.
And come to think of it, no matter what happened indeed-all the fights inside the classroom, the indifference, the obnoxious laughter, everything- some of us have remained friends. No matter what they told us we cannot do, we still exceeded our (low) expectations then and continue to pursue our lives and our challenges.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have an essay to write.
No comments:
Post a Comment