Have you ever walked down a street and seen a ray of light cast its reflection a certain way, or heard a voice so charmingly delicious, or even just observed time in a manner so intense, that it leaves you with a conundrum to solve?  Moments like these strike me hard. And by hard, I mean violently. And by violently I mean that the inspirational value derived from moments like these can be represented only on a polynomial curve that always approaches infinity. Of course, sometimes it isn't that easy. Sometimes, inspiration is the godforsaken magician’s rabbit that never seems to appear in the hat when you need it to. Sometimes I’m left staring at a page that remains so helplessly virginal that I wonder if I can ever even find the courage to stain it with the tip of my pen and dent it with the impact of my words.

Beginning a piece of writing can be scary. 

In science, this occurrence can be explained through the principle of inertia. The amount of energy and force required to start something is tenfold greater than the amount required to continue it. In literary terms however, the experience goes something like this: you are caught in a storm and engulfed in a hurricane of your own thoughts. It’s like stepping into another world – or rather another chaos – in which you are the sole resident. And in the eye of your hurricane lies tumultuous torrents of fear.

Yes, fear, pure honest-to-goodness fear of jotting down even a shadow of an idea.

The fear, as you may have already guessed, stems from things like the dread of failure, or of criticism, or of not being accepted, but what terrorizes me most about writing is the fear that what I intend for you to understand, what I’ve conceived in my mind’s eye, somehow renders blindness in yours.  As a writer, one must create a plastic form out of formless things - things as abstract as sorrow, joy, and love - put on to the page sounds that sound equally as sweet as when originally played on the flute or violin, movements that are weaved equally as intricately as the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” and colors that sear equally deep into the mind as the paintings of les Fauves. But how am I supposed to ascertain that you envision the same red, ring, or rhythm, as the one that I’ve written? It’s like shooting an arrow, but not knowing if you’ve hit the mark. 

And then there’s the last lurking question: what if it isn’t perfect? But is perfection even possible? Perfect expression. What an oxymoron…what a terribly outdated concept. Yet the question remains, along with my blank page that I continue to try to cover with ink, with the knowledge that I can, but with the confusion of how. 

I’m coming to realize however, that all this hesitation and doubt does for me is leave me with a heavy burden upon my soul and a malnourished imagination. It’s the not starting. It’s the over-thinking. It’s the fear of not living up to an oxymoron that keeps my inspiration from that exponentially increasing polynomial curve. 

So I’ll give it a try.

I’ve written a page of writing.

My arrow has been shot.

And I’m going to trust my intuition that I have indeed hit my mark.