I heard an English professor extolling the virtue of artificial intelligence and how his students could use it to overcome a condition he called writer’s block. AI could script that first sentence for them. He rejoiced — that elusive, frustrating first sentence is no longer the stopper on the ink bottle.
Should it be funny or impactful? It must be original. Good luck.
Before AI, there were other ways of coping with WB. The most successful strategy being struggling through: keep looking, keep scribbling. Getting up and going for a short walk is still the healthiest choice. And smoking, though proven effective for years, is no longer recommended. But, then, neither was writing, seriously.
I have what I call “writer’s detour.” Unlike a block, I cannot sit still, or take a walk. Instead, I try to use the slack time productively. To think about writing while performing routine farm tasks, like watering the greenhouse and lifting its sides.
Commas and Question Marks, both butterflies, select the greenhouse as a location for metamorphosis, and so, successfully protected, they emerge but are trapped. They fly tirelessly up into the transparent ceiling. It would be a shame if this is all they know of life.
And so I’ve gotten good at catching them. Both hands, gently cupped; you must grab quickly but softly. You must not press or grip, and yet you must conceal the fragile quarry as you walk it to the door.
Its wings flutter against your palm. Other times, the antennae: a linear tickle runs along my index finger.
Outside, I open my hands, and the butterfly opens its wings and stays there. I watch the wind play on its structure, and it shifts its position, its feet, barely perceptible, holding on to my fingertip.
The sun is out — it’s finally warm. I am fully distracted by what is to come on the other side of this article: the tractors, the transplanting, the weeds and the rain showers.
You can start in the middle or the end, but eventually you — and not a computer version of you — must still write the first sentence.
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