The important thing to understand about this drawing is where things begin. They don’t begin at the roots, like you’d imagine with a tree and its branches. They begin at the typewriter. They begin when the writer sits their ass down and does the work. That’s where the real growth comes from. That’s where the story has a chance to truly take bloom.
Walking my daughter through many miles – some with her staring happily into the sky, some with her sound asleep – taught me the power of idle, undistracted moments. Initially, I lamented the lack of writing time I had. Then, in the weary, golden hour moments of walking, something would sprout through. An idea. An understanding. A recontextualization. A character. Anything. It would be just enough to get my brain turning, just enough to grease the internal cogs before they’d move in such a roar I’d have to stop somewhere, somehow to furiously thumb it all into my phone.
But for all the idle ideas I gathered, nothing truly took shape in a way that felt satisfying until I sat down and got to work. Until I punched my way through a story, one word at a time. I’m pretty confident there’s a discernible difference in my body when I’ve written something – even if it’s just 100-200 words – than nothing at all. At the very least, I feel like I’m not interrupting my own momentum.
