One April Morning

Here I am, lamenting my inability to write. It's not writer's block, per se. Just a difficulty with settling down, thinking cohesively, being imaginative. Feeling muddled.

And then, serendipitously, I came across the Kurt Vonnegut quote above (via my new favourite site, Brain Pickings). The equilibrium! As always, the problem I am grappling with is not unique to me. And it's not even unique to writers. It's life. It's stories. It's the rise and fall.

The trouble is, sometimes we don't have the luxury of waiting it out. We just need to find a constant balance, for the sake of our career, income, family and sanity. We need to get on with it, no matter how we are feeling at the time. But how?

Apparently, the key is creating as much certainty as possible in our everyday lives, by way of ritual and routine. Waking up at the same time everyday, wearing the same clothes, eating the same meals. When we avoid mundane decision-making, we are clearing the way for creativity and truly innovative thought; according to Sarah Wilson and Jonathan Fields, who refer to this ritualisation as "dropping certainty anchors". Reading Sarah's column gave me one of those lightbulb moments. And it makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

As Gustave Flaubert once advised,


Certainty equals freedom. Banality takes our precious time and energy away from what doesn't really matter, freeing it to focus upon what does: living, loving and creating, with the clarity of mind to  recognise and appreciate truth and beauty whenever we are lucky enough to see it.