This panel from The Sandman #22 has crossed my mind quite a few times since I started rereading the series recently. I’ve been in a writing slump this summer. I’ve only written six or seven poems since school ended, and whether I can work half of them into anything readable seems iffy at best. That said, ideas (and sometimes even stray lines) keep hitting me at the worst possible times— while I’m in cars, trains, about to watch movies, actually watching movies. It does make me wonder how much of this slump is natural hibernation demanded by my inspiration elf, and how much of it is just lame unpreparedness on my part. I have a feeling that somewhere, there really is a shelf of books made of ideas I let fly without putting down so much as a scratch on a Post-It. And even though this imaginary shelf probably isn’t even half full— seeing as I’m young and not a prodigy— the thought that my imaginary books (maybe there are two of them, between 48-72 pages ea.?) outnumber my real books (zero) does make me want to try harder. Especially knowing something as easy as carrying a pen and small pad in my purse could mean that I get to sit down at the computer later that night with the first cells of a poem instead of a vague itch to check Gmail/Facebook/Twitter. The end.

This panel from The Sandman #22 has crossed my mind quite a few times since I started rereading the series recently. I’ve been in a writing slump this summer. I’ve only written six or seven poems since school ended, and whether I can work half of them into anything readable seems iffy at best. That said, ideas (and sometimes even stray lines) keep hitting me at the worst possible times— while I’m in cars, trains, about to watch movies, actually watching movies. It does make me wonder how much of this slump is natural hibernation demanded by my inspiration elf, and how much of it is just lame unpreparedness on my part. I have a feeling that somewhere, there really is a shelf of books made of ideas I let fly without putting down so much as a scratch on a Post-It. And even though this imaginary shelf probably isn’t even half full— seeing as I’m young and not a prodigy— the thought that my imaginary books (maybe there are two of them, between 48-72 pages ea.?) outnumber my real books (zero) does make me want to try harder. Especially knowing something as easy as carrying a pen and small pad in my purse could mean that I get to sit down at the computer later that night with the first cells of a poem instead of a vague itch to check Gmail/Facebook/Twitter.

The end.