V. H. King's Ink

When I brainstorm, my thoughts pile up like summer thunderheads. I get carried away in the wind, intent on doing my absolute very best. I put all I have into each part of a project–the planning, the drafts, the revisions, the final version. Ideas strike like lightning. Flashes of Inspiration wake me up in the middle of the night.  I grab my phone and tap out a messy series of notes, hoping I’ll remember what I was talking about when I get back to them the next day.

I am always trying to figure out how to craft each piece so that it sends a message and says it well. More often than not, I find that every story, each art piece and poem–they all have their own themes. I have learned to balance planning out a project with letting the project speak for itself. Case in point: I had the title of this blog post saved in my drafts for over a month. I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know how to say it well. So it sat there, until the words came to me. Allowing a piece to unfold means I’m more of a medium.

I can plan all I want, but in the end I’m better off listening to what each project says it needs to be.  

While wrestling with the rampant pandemic and the horrors of racism, I created with fevered grief. I couldn’t speak of much at work, I had few friends whom I trusted to process things with, and so I turned to the comforts of colors on a page. Poetry lines are far better than another scar on my skin. My body didn’t bleed, but my heart certainly did. The result was a series of poems and art pieces and essays that all amounted to a prayer.  

I had originally intended to publish a compilation of these pieces in a mini-anthology similar to my short stories. While I started mapping out which poems and art pieces I wanted where and how I wanted to organize thematic content, I felt like I kept running into a wall. Something wasn’t adding up, something didn’t sit right–and so I decided to take a step back. I’ve found when it feels like something’s not working, it’s best to give it a rest. Step away, but keeping my ears open for when it calls to me again. 

As you may have guessed, that project is calling again. The gist is that, while I’m still going to publish those poems and essays, I’m not going to do them all at once. I’m going to go section by section. I’d rather have room and time to work with both intention and a listening ear.

I don’t want to just slap everything together and call it done. Not when I’m sharing my heart and soul.  

Some of these poem, art, and prose pieces may not meet their audiences as soon as I thought, and that’s okay. New pieces have come into being since I first planned this project–content I would not be able to feature if I had rushed things. As complex as I like to daydream and as detailed as I tend to get, the bottom line is that I always have to listen to what the project is telling me.

Sometimes that means breaking things down even further; other times it means letting go of certain details or themes. Some of those get saved for later. Some of those are simply exercises to teach me more before I move on to the final version. (But really–is anything ever truly finished?) Either way, I have learned to hang in there. To wait.  

I have learned to keep living–literally–because I don’t know what a project needs yet. As horrible as the world can be, as heartbreakingly beautiful as so many moments will be, I keep living because I’m not done with these projects. I still want to know the end of the story, and I don’t want to rush myself to the final chapter of my own life without allowing myself the time to rest, recover, and carry on.