Here is my process of writing.

I get an idea. Or ten. I collect unique, fragmented ideas from events during the week and I start to write. I make lines and fitting metaphors, descriptions that paint Monets and Goyas in my readers’ minds.

Monday I started writing about Fruit Roll-Ups. Scrapped it. Thursday, I had a breakdown in the middle of my university’s academic building, then proceeded to shed one tear in front of my university’s First Lady. Thursday afternoon, I picked up my laptop and started to rant –not write, rant about how awful life is for college students. I suddenly felt bad for whining so much. My message became, "everything could be worse". I concluded by saying, in spite of everything, humans are made to persevere. It was sort of a lazy excuse to make my rant worth something. To be honest, it might have worked out… then Friday night happened, and everything definitely got worse in my life. The message was lost on me. I would be lying to myself by continuing that piece.

Saturday, someone suggested I write about things that made me happy to combat the recent negativity in my life. I started to write about foggy mornings, how gnarled black branches looked against a grey sky, and how wet grass felt under sneakers. I wrote about waking up to sunrises, how it looked when the morning light sliced through the slats, creating fiery bands juxtaposing white walls. I wrote about streetlamps and neon signs, the cool night air, the distant wail of a siren and abandoned city streets full of possibility.

So I write out whatever I have on my idea. I write pages and pages of stuff, then I hit a block. The piece is sorely underdeveloped. I reread the piece on Fruit Roll-Ups. It had potential but I wasn’t feeling it really. Scrapped. I don’t like forcing out a creative piece. The draft on happiness felt utterly fake by the time Friday hit. I didn’t feel happy, I felt tired and beaten down. Scrapped.

The piece on stresses was great and I thought I could roll with it. It was the most developed and meaningful piece I had written this week. But Friday night completely tossed my message out the window. I didn’t feel like a fighter taking on the world, I felt like lying in bed and taking the L.

So I find new ideas. This week, that was hard to do, lying in bed and sulking. But the best thing to do when you run into a block of any sorts is to keep thinking of ideas to make things work. Lying in bed miserable doesn’t mean you get to stop searching for answers.

So this is my process for writing.

I take all my drafts and fragmented ideas and I save them. I keep the pages in my journal and I save the document in a “Someday” folder. The pages of my journal eventually will be made out of incomplete prose and my “Someday” folder will outweigh my “Published” one.

As a writer, I’m constantly changing my mind. I’m always editing, always revising in every aspect of my life. I find beauty starting from a blank page to filled lines of my creativity and thoughts. The process of inspiration, brainstorming, and scrapping of an idea teaches me to accept paths that won’t work out. Failure and change is useful so everything is given the chance to fall into place, perhaps not in the way expected, but in a way that makes absolute sense in the end. It drives my head into a wall sometimes, but this is the tragic heroism of writers. I am a writer and I change my mind. I make mistakes and I execute premature ideas, but I somehow keep the faith that I will be content with the end result.

And the next time I get a crazy, underdeveloped idea, the cycle restarts.