Tuesday's Inspiration ala Dorothy Unhak #amwriting #MFRW

While reading this essay by Dorothy Uhnhak, I came across another tidbit that struck me and was oh, so true. She's talking about an event in writing I also face every day. "At the beginning of the day,I am a pauper before the blank white paper."

Made me feel good to know someone else struggling to put words on paper feels the same way. In my case, it's not the blank paper but the empty computer screen. The start is usually slow with one word followed by another word and suddenly the flow happens and the scene takes form. Now sometimes I may hit the delete key and erase many of the words written, but the act of writing them helps coalesce the random thoughts in my head. The words I keep and the words I've deleted start to add up. The thoughts form. Those words removed often are back story I needed to know to give life to the characters and a goal for the plot.

There are some days when the blank page just stares back at me. I refuse to let it remain blank, so one word at a time. That's the way I read and that's the way I write.

How about you to you find the blank page to be a challenge? Do you just simply stare at it and wait for the words to miraculously form? Do you start one word at a time until the flow begins? No matter if you have to hit the delete key or just jot some note that you'll finn in later. One can't be a writer unless they're putting word after word on that blank screen.

Tuesday's Inspiration from an essay by Dorothy Unhak #aminspired

I share something with Dorothy Unhak. While taking a time out from writing to work as a nurse, I did what she did. Here's the quote. "The writer in me was compilling events, feelings, atmosphere, emotions, situations for future use."

Upon reading this essay, I realized the years I worked as a nurse did the above for me. Not that I copied anything I had experienced as a nurse in a complete fashion, bits and pieces crept into my stories. Watching my patients and their families experience emotions from grief, anger to hope and success, I had a wealth of emotions. The events I watched unfold at times formed bits and pieces of what I was writing about. The first stories were about nurses and doctors but then I began enlarging my writing world and turned to fashioning fantasy stories but the emotions I watched and sometimes experienced during the years of working in a hospital and home care situations found their way into writing about other times and places.

In many ways, a writer is a sponge soaking up all the things they witness, see, taste, smell, hear and touch become part of what they become as a writer. The moral of this little bit of inspiration is while working in other areas, just absorb what you experience. File these things away for the days when you're able to write. While working as a nurse, I wrote little but then I returned to writing a richer person, able to put some of the things I'd compilled into words on paper. Everything a writer experiences can become the seeds for a story at some future date.