Centre Of Inertia

Centre Of Inertia

There’s no such thing as writer’s block. If you want to write you will. But write what? Even with a prompt or title, how to expand a theme or convey an idea? How to build believable characters. And pace! It needs just the right amount of pace.

And then even when it’s written, it’s best to leave it days, weeks, even months and years before going back and reviewing. Is it still as good as you remember (or as bad)? Can it take a rewrite or maybe, if you’re lucky, it just needs a tweak & polish? Or is it just another load of amateur trash - good for nothing other than leaving more room for better things in the ‘cloud’ or another pile of A4 for recycling?

Then there’s the style. Is it your own authentic voice or one you’re borrowing from your current favourite author or even from the random short story you’ve just read online?

Maybe not today then. And there’s washing piling up, the cat’s paw prints on the patio doors plus the fridge is running on empty which is not environmentally friendly. So maybe today’s just not the day and it’s just a thinking day. A mulling it over (and over and over) day. Tomorrow will be a better day. A writing day. Thoughts will be clearer, ideas sharper. Perhaps there’ll even be a plot and a perfect device to convey it. An unreliable narrator? Everyone loves an unreliable narrator!

Tomorrow, as we all know, never comes… but this week… every time I check my emails there’s the flagged one. An hour to write anything. The title is ‘Centre of Inertia’. Maybe I’ll actually give it a go this time. I’ll have a think and see what I come up with. Perhaps I’ll have time later or maybe tomorrow…

The next day I’m wishing my vocabulary was bigger (at least I wish it wasn’t shrinking). I wish I sounded like I know what I’m talking about. An expert in something; science would be good. Anything really but something that helps with metaphors and similes and would give my writing an edge, poetry, power. Momentum. Something that stands out from the crowd.

I think about it again the day after and the one after that. It starts a conversation over a bank holiday lunch.

So what, exactly, is inertia? I mean I’ve been trying to think of similes.

We talk about the draining of bath water, a spinning wheel when the motors are disengaged, a hamster wheel. Like my life, I think. Words and thoughts race all day and often most of the night without going anywhere. It can be exhausting.

You attempt to explain the difference between centrifugal and centripetal force and my mind races like a disengaged motor.

You say, inertia is basically an inherent resistance to a change of state.

I say, perhaps I’ll think about it again later. Or maybe tomorrow.