We’ve all been there, cursed by that singular slice of genius prose that we then must follow.    

What do you do, just how do you take your reader from something that is achingly beautiful – do you just stop and leave this tale as one of those unfinished masterpieces? 

No, of course you don’t. 

You stare for untold hours upon uncounted hours simultaneously celebrating and cursing that near fluke collection of words. 

Dam those typing fingers, and NEVER forget that judging your genius, sitting, standing in the wings loudly rolling their eyes is the spectre of Imposter Syndrome, a monkey that clings to your back with a tighter grip than a third animal trying to sneak into the ark…

It’s purely subjective, a beauty that rests in the eye of the beholder.

But surly at one time all writers must lift their fingers from the keys, whistle quietly to themselves and then look forlornly for a third hand to pat them on the back? 

A few times the planets have aligned, and words have just fallen into place as if they were in the writers waiting room already written patiently waiting for me, the poor teller of tall tales to find them and set them free.

I wrote such prose when I was trying to describe the hanging of a young woman for the crime of killing her newborn child.  I’d set the scene, scattered crumbs of doubt that she was guilty, laid the premise that that hanging would be a terrible crime against real justice, but that inevitably that the law that protects men would blindly proceed.

The gallows were new stripped pine, they cried, the trees that surrounded the sad scene pulled at the at the air and created a storm, rain was pulled back into the cold sky to fall as vengeful stones of ice. The little tragic body was rushed away to a shallow hole in the ground, while men with upturned collars retreated from the storm, away from the crime. Hopefully the reader sheds a tear at the cruel injustice of it all.  I did.  I do every time I reread it.  It runs over a few pages, and I am so enormously proud of my association with it.

But, back to the point in hand, what then, how do you follow whatever you consider to be the epoch of your creativity?

In this instance, being a ‘pantster’ came and bit me with a hard unforgiving tearing of soft buttock flesh.  I had no plan, no script as to what was to happen next, I’d written myself in to an emotionally exhausting corner with no apparent way out…

What to do, what to do?

True to form I drank tea, drank tea as if some sort of perverse prohibition were imminent. 

It didn’t help.

And it did.

Time to breathe is invaluable.

I had to follow this scene, so I did.

Compulsion is indeed necessity, and so I wrote what happened next, and then what happened after page 43 and took the reader all the way to page 337, and a suitable ending was created.

Of all the problems that a creative soul can ever suffer, this one is the most joyous cross to bear. 

So, this missive will end on a positive.

ENJOY the ride, you paid the money, you sought out this white knuckled adrenaline experience, best you enjoy it!

In ending, I remind all to hug those you love, tell them as often as you can just how important they are in this life that you have, and above all stay safe and do your very best to remain sane.