I’m trying to write, really I am. But ideas just now are not ready to eat yet – they’re only half-baked.
When I do my regular school pick-up walk, it doubles as free-to-think time. (It also doubles as yes-I-do-take-some-exercise-actually time, and my own individual version of Springwatch at the moment, just so’s you know.)
There still seem to be plenty of ideas floating around. But none of them has settled yet. Or at least, they work just fine while I’m walking along the road, writing them in my head.
Come the evening, come post-tidy up time, and the ideas have taken roost elsewhere. Or they don’t seem to have as much oomph as they did earlier in the day.
Thing is, a lot of my evening time is to do with reading just now. Head down, working my way through other people’s blogs. Is it compulsion? Is it a recovery of enjoying reading – and giving myself time to do so?
And then, the tricky bit: am I writing what I want to write? What I see others writing? More to the point: do I limit my own writing because of what I see others writing?
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Fast forward to the next morning. The gulls are flying across my view as I look up. Other than that, there’s no more limitations on my thoughts this morning than I make them.
(There are limitations, like planning food, and library trips, and getting washing dried, but I can choose to put those on one side for now. Â Really. I can.)
You wouldn’t eat something that’s half-baked. True. Our stomachs can tell. But our brains: they don’t mind taking an idea, letting it stew. Or maybe steep, like tea.
When you pour out tea before it’s ready, you can tell by the colour. So you stop, let the rest sit in the pot, and wait. You know that, pretty soon, it’ll come to the right colour, the right strength, and you’ll enjoy it.
But actually, you only know that when you pour it out. Again. Have a good look at it. Sip it, maybe, for yourself.
Half-baked ideas and weak tea. It’s not much of a breakfast. But if I keep pouring, stopping, waiting, pouring again – sooner or later, the good stuff will come through.
I can taste it.
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