That Creative Spark

I wish the creative process was easy. I wish it was like turning on a garden hose. You’d adjust to the required setting and pull the trigger: squirt – a paragraph of inspirational prose; sprinkle – some witty verse; and spray – an artfully crafted epic poem. But sadly, in my experience, creativity seems to be much more like trying to nail down a venomous snake with one hand: it’s bloody difficult and rarely ends well.

Still, we persevere. Hence my new resolution to write down something, anything, whatever I can wring out of this poor, tired, deluded brain every single Monday night. The new regime started last week, and I haven’t quite given up yet!

The title of this week’s little jumble of ‘thought(s) for the day’ comes from a poem I scribbled down almost twenty years ago, sitting at a desk in Swindon Library while desperately trying to avoid working on a thesis. It’s a short piece of doggerel that seems to have some resonance with today’s musings so I thought I’d write it down again. It goes like this:

That Creative Spark

Ow…

Singed by the creative spark

Burnt by its flash of brilliance

Neurons shut down by the surge of new thought

My mind becomes blank, my impulses wrought

Of the inward gestation of outwardly sought

Figurings, ponderings, likenings, quickenings

Brain now more fraught than it ought

Terminal overload

Head will explode

Creation grounds out through my feet

I’m beat

I’m a gibbering wreck in my seat

Not the best, but it makes me smile as I wrestle once again with these tricksy words, trying to pin them down into something at least resembling partial coherence. It’s not an easy process but, at some point at least, it seems worthwhile.

So, let’s do this together. Let’s wrestle this bloody snake into submission and see what comes out.

Till next week.