She perched by the window, coffee in hand, her leather-bound journal open on her lap. The blank pages stared back, taunting her to write anything. She didn’t lack ideas, if anything, she had too many.

“Just start. You’ll find your footing,” she reassured herself.

She rummaged through her notes: half-baked ideas, scrambled sentences and stick-figure drawings. Images danced across her mind, sentences pirouetted endlessly on loop, all flowing like acrobatic blood, yet never landing on the page as she hoped.

Her fingers itched to write. Her breath caught. Weeks of frustration weighed on her chest. Every word that hit the paper, she immediately scribbled off in defeat.

“That metaphor didn’t work! The imagery isn’t rich enough! That idea was not fully formed! I want to scream. OH. MY. GOSH!”

So, she did. One long, loud, cathartic shriek. Yet she didn’t feel better, nor did she feel worse. Just suspended in the same dissatisfaction as before.

The steam from her coffee had evaporated, and her journal kissed the ground. She sat still, seemingly lifeless, though passion still coursed through her veins, her breathing slowing.

Then, a thought tumbled into her mind. “What if I wrote about THIS experience?”