Fire

When I was in first grade I set our toaster on fire. I thought I could toast a popcorn cake, but it ignited a fire. In a panic, my older sister (who was babysitting me) and I called her best friend, who ran barefoot in calf-deep Colorado snow across several yards to get to our house. The panic we felt froze our minds, but my sister's friend entered our house, saw the toaster on fire, and pulled the plug from the socket. The fire went out immediately, and I had a "duh, turn the toaster off, Stupid" realization folowed by a "I guess a popcorn cake isn't the same as an English muffin" realization.

The minds of children and adults are prone to freeze in a moment of panic when we are immersed in the situation. It takes an outsider's perspective to awaken our brains. As a writer, I may not find myself in a state of panic, but my mind may freeze or become blocked when writing. Whether or not I purposely search for the key to unlock my writing, an outsider usually appears at some point that gives me a new perspective on my ideas or my writing and frees up my mind. The outsider isn't necessarily a mentor, critic, or reader; it may be a book on writing, an event read about in the news, a blogger's personal view on his/her life, a snapshot of a conversation overheard between two people, my own reaction to something indirectly related that I experience one day, a dream I remember upon waking, or my daughter reminding me through her actions to keep it simple, to look at the little things.

I don't have to extinguish too many fires in my writing, but maybe I am too cautious or too conservative in an effort to avoid causing a fire. Perhaps I try to hard not to offend anyone in my writing. Maybe I fear exposing parts of myself in my writing, because I'd never be able to take them back. Or maybe I worry that one small fire will spark another and another until I lose control and find myself in ruins.

If I am writing with a too-conscious mind, I must be preventing the flow of oxygen into my writing, which is the fuel of fire. The freedom of air in my writing is writing the truth that exists in the center of my being. It's one thing to personally acknowledge and understand those truths, but to expose them and share them in writing is much harder to do.