NANOWRIMO inspiration break

If you're writing daily in November, and feel yourself running on empty, take a break and read this lovely essay by Sven Birkerts on Aeon.co.

"It was going to New York City last week that finally did it, almost as if the point of going had been for me to be in Central Park on that fine crystal afternoon, to sit on a bench by the lake watching that cinema trick of a painting dissolving into motion. Something happened in that spot. I was touched in the core of my reverie by one of those unaccountable inner shifts. This one scarcely more than a flutter, really, but I took that flutter as the beginning of a larger turn, a motion counter to the deep inertia of the long weeks before.

"The matter sounds so simple. All of a sudden, I found myself wanting to write sentences again and, when I did, it felt to me like the rains had finally come, stirring up life in the dry land. I don’t know if I even shifted in my place, but whatever it was has since brought something back that had gone missing. The time hasn’t been that long, really, but by what clock? What decides long? The clock of days or the clock of the inside life? How long can a person feel unconnected and not feel that it’s too long? Writing, for me, is the mainspring, the momentum, that small tipping action inside that makes the watch keep real time."

Continue reading at Aeon.co