Taoist Pearls, Wisdom for Writers: Melting Frozen Ideas

fragments
of river ice
melt in the
spring sun
–Terry Chitwood

If your heart is encased in ice, you will find it difficult to write about love. If your head is frozen, you will find it hard to write creatively. If your spirit is possessed by a cold fear, you will find it impossible to write inspirationally.

Grow

Ideas need room to breathe, room to grow, room to expand. Ideas need to be porous, allowing you the space to enter the idea, examine it creatively from a variety of angles, and then exit. Embracing ideas with heartfelt warmth can help thaw them.

Blossom

With the spring sun in your heart, melt the cold intellectualizations in your mind. Injecting warmth into ideas dissolves their icy armor, revealing a soft core of concepts you can explore. Ideas can blossom like flowers, given proper nourishment . . . proper encouragement. Let your ideas blossom in the spring sun, nourished by the water of the melting ice.

Photo Credit: Photo by Natalie Shmeliova