A Funny Thing Happened on the Way...

So, remember several posts ago when I talked about taking the one line I'd managed to scribble down the day before and spinning it into a poem. Over the course of the past weeks of revision, that line ended up on the cutting room floor, so to speak. In other words, the line I had used to so carefully build the poem ended up not fitting the final version. I still liked the line, but I put it back in my journal for another time.

Today, I was messing with some lines I'd worked up last week. I finally had the lines going in the right direction, but I needed a title to pull it all together. As I sat and stared at the screen in silence, feeling the minutes ticking by, magic-presto, that amazing spark happened and I realized the discarded line worked perfectly as a title to what was happening in the new poem.

This is a prime example of creativity happening at its best. I couldn't force it. I simply had to be open. I had to be open to the fact that a line I loved and used as a springboard for a draft, didn't belong there. I had to be open to letting it drift and sift through the process. I had to be open to using it as a title rather than a true line.

It's a good lesson for me to remember: to be open, not to rush and push, but to let that unnameable thing happen.