Sometimes ideas for essays come easily. Other times I struggle to find just one. I review the notes I’ve made on scraps of paper since the last time I was on deadline but nothing jumps out at me.
And I begin to worry that I’ll never find another idea—despite the fact that I’ve been writing a weekly essay for over 40 years. I’m dismayed by my lack of confidence and my tendency to catastrophize. So I grab my scribbled notes and sit down at the computer.
But I can’t write a coherent sentence. I’m wasting my time and I know it. Creativity can’t be ordered to appear; it has to be invited and then it shows up whenever it pleases—or not at all. I might as well do something else, almost anything else.
So, while I’m folding the laundry or weeding the garden or brushing my teeth, the idea arrives. Not as a whole essay, of course, but as a first sentence or an image or a memory. The heavy clang of my mother’s sterling silver knives as they slide out of their flannel sleeves; the chalky smell of polish as I dip the sponge into the jar.
“Where do you get your ideas?” listeners sometimes ask. “Well, I write about ordinary things,” I reply, “and they’re everywhere.”
