I’ll Pretend I Didn’t Hear That.

THE REWARD OF RANDOM ACTION. Let’s just see what happens.
This can result in either something new and lovely… or ramming the ship into an iceberg. I’ve done both.

It’s nice when you have a good idea of what you are trying to do, but not always. There is that old saying about “The best laid plans of mice and men…,” etc. Christopher Columbus had a good plan worked out to take him and his ships to China, but he ended up in the Bahamas. Personally, while he may have been disappointed with the outcome, I think he landed in a much better place to spend a vacation. Have you ever tried to get a decent Piña Colada in Hong Kong?

Sometimes, no matter how screwed up things may go they all work out in the end. I have read that both Teflon and the microwave oven in your kitchen were accidental discoveries. Those two things have worked out rather well.

Viagra was a medication that was supposed to treat high blood pressure and Angina, but had a most interesting side effect.

While I can’t compare this blog to Viagra (Make up your own jokes at this point) or Teflon it is often the product of Random Action. There have been many mornings when I look down at the blank page and wonder out loud what is going to happen next.

There have been any number of days when I put the nib down on the paper and nothing happens unless there is some thought process behind it pushing the pen across the page. It doesn’t take much. Most mornings there isn’t much available to devote to pushing.

One foggy morning I was sipping my coffee and staring at that blank space for so long that I thought, “This is it. I’m dry. I might as well throw this pen into the trash and take up needlepoint. At least then I’ll be able to tell when a piece of work is done and I can sell it at a sidewalk sale. Nobody ever buys a Short Story at a sidewalk sale.

I put down that pen and just sat there staring at it. It was mocking me. I could tell. It was saying to me, “I’m full of words, Dummy, but you are concentrating on that piece of paper. It’s nothing until I get going. So, forget the paper and put your focus on me, your trusty Dollar Store pen.”

I checked to make sure that I had taken the right meds. Then I thought about the pen and all of its potential. It took me only a few seconds to realize that I was still half asleep and seriously full of hooey. Pens do not talk. So, rather than give in to some very strange anthropomorphizing my way into therapy, I picked up that pen and got to work.

I wrote 700 words about that pen. I didn’t mention that the pen had been giving me advice. Doing that would have switched my writing onto a literary siding called, “Psychotic Rambling.” I kept all of that to myself, but as soon as I was finished for the day I tossed that pen into the nearest trash can.

I have not yet reached the point in my sometimes cartoonish life where I am going to start taking creative coaching from something that comes “Four For A Dollar.” If it had been a “Montblanc” or a “Prince Rainier” pen I might have paid more attention, but what kind of writer would I be if I was being counseled and guided by something that comes in a plastic blister pack?

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