Rituals

Meet my inspiration.

One of them, anyway. Some are real people in my life, too. Some are bloggers I have the pleasure of knowing, a little.

Every day when I sit down I jettison my rational side for a time and invoke whatever little bits of magic I can to get the words flowing. My friend the crane, here, is the first one.

It’s solid brass, made in India, poised on one foot. I feel the tension and thrill of the hunter flow into me when I put my hand on his back. I’m preparing to go hunting, too… for words, for ideas, for stories. I need to be poised like he is. I know the statue isn’t alive, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is how it makes me feel, how it makes me feel like it’s time to go to work, to open those little doors and windows in me and let the process begin to blow. Or, to ‘billow’ as someone said recently.:-)

I’ll bet you have some little rituals you go through to help, too. I’ve got a can of Unicorn meat sitting on the window sill in front of me for a little touch of magic, and a small turned vase made from black walnut that is just a piece of wonder. Touching it grounds me.

Further down is a clip from the Kenneth Branagh movie of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Listening to Shakespeare always gets my juices flowing. This ought to be mandatory listening in any leadership training course. But it’s something else that gets me in the mood.

These are my rituals. Do you have some? Could you share them in the comments? Who knows, something you say might be just the trick to help a fellow writer along.