Going Inkless

     Some stories come to you out of nowhere, demanding to be committed to paper.  Some characters just drop in on you like unexpected house guests and take up residence in your skull until you agree to tell their tale.  I think that every writer has probably experienced this kind of inspiration.  It's what moves many to embrace the calling.  Later, at times when the writer sits down to consciously create something, it can be maddeningly frustrating that similar inspiration isn't on the same timetable.      But those flashes of ideas aren't really from nowhere.  Although the concepts may seem new to you, they are really the product of your own brain working without your conscious direction.  It's a feat of ordinary magic that your mind takes in disparate elements from your life and your environment, mixes them together and presents you with something you didn't even realize you were thinking about.  We all do this, write...

     The perfect thing to write about struck me suddenly the other morning.  It was a bolt of inspiration, like opening a door into Springtime.  The subject was one of those new truths that bubbles up from time to time, distilled out of suffering and experience left to simmer quietly over time.  Like many such revelations, it was profound, yet simple, a shift of thought that welcomed peace and happiness into the soul.      All was there in that quiet moment.  This one harmonious chord was accompanied by the phrasing and ideal words to be able to share the secret with any who were open to the idea.  I determined immediately that I would put it all down on paper the minute I woke up. Yes. It came to me in a dream.      Cliché, certainly, but cliché for a reason.  There isn't a culture on this earth that hasn't placed some importance on what goes on behind our eyelids when we go to sleep.  Even bey...