I’m writing a story every day for May……trouble is beginning….I feel full of ideas, and yet blank, all at the same time…hmnnn…..maybe that’s the place to begin….

Now, to begin. The problem isn’t that I have no ideas – it’s that I am in a period of intense input and swirling ideas….

But, for me, these times are subterranean, subverbal, beneath the layers spoken or written language – or maybe even body language – can easily convey.

Easily?! The truth is, they can’t convey it at all. This is at the level of dream, of in8tuition, of the basic senses and the way they mingle to gether, endlessly shifting, combinind, separating.

Just as words can never get across the true nature of vivid dreaming, or love, or passion, or soul-deep, shattering sorrow, neither will they work here.

I have stories to tell. They are welling and surging up within me – and I have learned not to force them.

Prying open a bud to cause an earlier bloom will fail. All that the vibrant blossom to come needs is contained within the time capsule of the bud.

Prying open my thoughts to coax forth a premature story will not work any better. All that the nascent stories need to flower forth fruitfully is contained in the buds held, right now, within the time capsule of my mind.

When the bus is forced, the most vital ingredient is lost – the natural, unhurried, free flowing of time.

Time is integral to the fully fledged flower folded safely inside the shell of the bud; time is just as integral to the fully fledged stories curled safely into the shell-buds of my thoughts.

It might seem silly, then, that I have just committed to writing a story every day for 31 days.

It might even seem foolish, or as though I am torturing myself.

But those same thoughts and ideas, instincts and sensations that urge me to wait, to allow simmering, composting, and coalescence to happen in their own times and manners, also said that this challenge would be, for me, the shaking-up, catalytic force of spring.

A bud cannot be pried upon and still remain intact and healthy.

But a sprig may be brought inside in earliest spring, and, given warmth, sunlight, and plenty of water and nurturing, be brought to the loveliness of its full promise.

This is called forcing, in the world of botany – but it isn’t. It’s simply altering the manner in which the plant’s needs are met.

The parameters change, but what is needed is provided. The plant is urged along, but not forced.

So, perhaps, this is why I feel it’s a worthy goal, personally, to attempt to write a story every day. Because the stories can’t be forced out, but the parameters of providing them the nourishment they need to grow can be altered. Things can be shifted, urged along, enticed….

This is a fresh burst of new energy, and a focus point that will shine, for me, as brightly as the sun.

I will know, at the beginning of each day, that I will birth a story each day.

I will be pregnant with stories, all month long.

And, when the month is over, I will have 31 literary children who are yet to be born – perhaps yet to even be imagined…..

OH!

I just had an idea!

This, the beginning, was hard to find. There seemed to be so much at stake, in the beginning, and all of existence to choose from….

But, beginning here – and begun I clearly have – I will end the day’s story with the beginning of tomorrow’s….

This will allow the swirling story-energies within me a point to coalesce around, to weave and twine and pull apart just as they please, and I might not even be aware of it.

It’ll allow the next beginning to inhabit my dreams, to play, to bound about as freely as Annalise bounds about the yard, a wild free creature delighting in her natural environment.

I’m not sure that this story of the birthing of a story is what I thought it might be. I won’t know, until later, when I reread it.

But the contractions are coming quickly now, and soon, the birthing will be over, and i will hold the result of my labor, and I will belong to it as surely as it belongs to me.

I will harbor it, and shelter it, as the shrub outside my bathroom window harbors the sparrows and chickadees and cardinals that take refuge there…..