So here I am, writing a monthly column about what is absolutely the hardest thing for me about writing: finding inspiration.
Who am I to think I am one to write insightfully about that which confuzzles me with my own writing to no end?
I tell my kids (currently 108 eighth-graders) that perhaps the most challenging aspect of writing is coming up with ideas.
I should know -- I live and breathe this struggle every day as a teacher-writer.
And every day that I ask my students to write, I provide them an “idea of the day”, just in case their own free-writing is sputtering and stalling or they’re in between pieces.
Huh.
Me, the Idea Guy.
How ironic.
When it comes to my own writing, boy oh boy, do I sputter and stall. I spend a lot of time not thinking of ideas, but thinking about how impossible it is to come up with ideas.
I look out across the classroom at all those fuzzy little heads bowed over notebooks, mechanical pencils scritching away, and I think: Physician, heal thyself; teacher-writer, teach yourself.
And I’ve only recently come to the realization that I’m far too hung up on the belief that I have to have an actionable idea before I can write. As in, a big idea.
Phooey.