Tuesday 22 May 2012

When Ideas Flow, You Glow; But Jot Them & Don’t Let Them Go

One thing I have learnt while “writing”, “blogging” or “trying to write” is that there are times when bursts of ideas are crossing my mind. And then there are silent times when I am not able to write even a single straight worthwhile sentence. The times when the mind is blocked are painful. But the key is not to get depressed. Instead one should try to cash the moments when brainwaves, thoughts, words and phrases are flowing.

To benefit from my “fertile moments”, what I do is that I keep making a list of blog ideas. This list grows with time. Whenever I think of something to write about, I jot it down so that even if I am short of time at that moment to expand the idea, at least it is preserved. I have made endless lists like that so far and it feels like I have a treasure of inspiration to last me a life time of writing.

Here, a word of caution needs to be uttered. Just as food goes stale when kept in the refrigerator for a long time, ideas also decay like this if kept unattended for long periods of time. I have gone through the routine of house cleaning several times myself. Many a times it has happened that if I kept a list for a long time, I completely forgot the purpose of the listed topics and the supporting spark to convert them into meaningful pieces.

So keep writing ideas down so that they are documented and not lost in the mist. Hit while the iron is hard and your brain is on fire. But attend to your ideas timely as well so that they don’t turn to dust.

1 comment:

maryam said...

true! :) such well-written article masha Allah :D