author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Bear with me a moment. I've had an epiphany. (Yes, another one.)

The other day I was, once again, doing my daily freewriting exercise. I was using for a writing prompt the dream I'd had that morning, which had posited some fairly out-of-character behavior on the part of a friend of mine. In the dream, she was reviewing a list she'd had me write of near-term personal improvement goals; upon reading the item "explore my religious/spiritual growth" (or something like that), she muttered something like "Well, this one's clearly bullshit." I decided I wasn't going to just politely let her spit all over an important part of me. I told her, "Well, I am religious, and you're just going to have to deal with it." Then I woke up.

It was terribly banal, as dreams go, but I thought I'd scribble on it anyway. Which seemed foolish. I mean, I'd already written the dream down once. What was I going to do, write it down again?

Apparently, I wasn't. I instead found myself writing a story about two sisters, the older one trying to replace their missing parents for the younger. Why was the younger sister putting up with it at the age of twenty-one? What had growing up been like for the two of them, that the older sister's intrusive, nosy micromanagement was just par for the course--and where did she get all those unhealthy ideas about age and beauty? Also, why were their parents missing? Well, they were in Alaska when the whole state went missing. Wait--the whole damn state of Alaska? Disappeared? When was this?

By the time my timer went off, I still hadn't reached the actual incidents from the dream. I was still writing a family history, figuring out some worldbuilding backstory, and feeling my way into the younger sister's idea of normal.

Here's the epiphany: There's always more to write beyond what the writer sat down with the idea to write. Which means writing isn't just about taking what's inside one's head and spilling it onto the page. The act of writing actually adds to that initial supply.

Why, it's almost as if writing were a creative act...!

Obvious, right? Except, oddly, not. There's talk of creativity and imagination, but there's also a tendency to say "I don't know what to write" as though it were reason enough not to start. That old metaphor about "opening a vein and bleeding onto the page" makes it sound as though words were simply (if painfully) poured out like water from an existing reservoir. It's like the creativity is supposed to all happen quietly, behind the scenes, long before the pen hits the page. Even that evocative image of driving a highway by night, such that you can only see a few feet ahead at any one time but you're always moving that illuminated area forward to reveal more, can be considered to fall into that camp: It's all in there, you just can't see it all until you start to write it down.

I have to insist it's not so. At least, not for me. I don't think the rest of that highway actually exists until I start to drive. I think the writing causes it to come into existence.

Which means that "I don't know what to write" is never the last word. Which is glorious. It doesn't matter how lost or ignorant or out of ideas I'm feeling; it's always worth it to just start typing. I will never find that reserve empty; the act of tapping it actually causes it to refill.

Realizing this, or, if you prefer, coming to think about it that way clearly for the first time, was like finding my faith. It was practically a religious epiphany. ("I am religious. You're just going to have to deal with it.") And, like a closely held religious faith--which I think I'm going to say it actually is--it gives me great comfort to think about.

So that's what was on my mind this morning.