This is a picture I got the other day from my son. This is my granddaughter Eliza who apparently crashed after engaging in a 10-round battle with eating utensils and some unidentified pureed fruit. Looking at the expression on her face and the remains of the food on her highchair and herself, the word “wipeout” came to mind.
It still makes me smile because I know how much she likes to do things herself. But the process has its share of “wipeouts” and lessons learned. Like don’t touch your face or hair when eating bananas or squash. Cleanup is then a huge project…whoever is doing it. Don’t put too much in your mouth at one time. It makes chewing very difficult.
Photos like these are great writing prompts too because they inspire a number of different scenarios in your mind. But I think a photo like this is indicative of how we as writers can sometimes feel with our writing projects or even our creativity.
It can happen to us in just how we live our lives too… It leads us to this “what do I do now” look you see on her face.
Finding time to organize, time to research, time to write, time to post and respond on social media/email can make us feel exactly how this photo looks. It can happen to us in just how we live our lives too, don’t you think? It leads us to this “what do I do now” look you see on her face.
While all-out food conflagrations like this happen less and less as we get older and more experienced, you know there will be times when we are going to find ourselves in writing or personal disarray for sure, maybe more often than we like.
Trying to walk with God is not always going to look pretty, either. In other words, we’ll still end up being a figurative walking dirty dinner dish sometimes, we’re human. Isn’t it good to know that someone cleanses us from the top of our head to our toes with his grace rooted in the greatest sacrifice ever?
I know face cleaning after a struggle like this is not what my granddaughter likes, but you can tell after she’s all cleaned up and even has a bath, the intensity dials down, the relaxation begins, and a fresh start can begin again…so can we.
Below is a link to a podcast that I thought was really helpful from Your Best Writing Life with Linda Goldfarb. Linda’s guest Sara Turnquist has some good things to say about how we can clean up and wipe up our messy writing process and become more creative and productive. I highly recommend the whole episode (and subscribing as well), but there’s some really good meat that is helpful.
Steve Linscomb is a former television news reporter with more than 25 years experience in a number of small and large U.S. TV markets. His focus is in the development of the craft of fiction writing, more specifically historical fiction in both reading and in his current personal writing efforts.
He lives in San Antonio, Texas.
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