19. The ideas room

I'm tired. My list of writing ideas has been emptied out. So I sit at my desk, awaiting inspiration.

It's an interesting process – it feels as if possibilities are getting edited out just before they make it into my consciousness. There is a cold and disapproving guard in there, in the dark corridor just outside my ideas room, who's not letting any old ideas in. He's (and it is a he) already saying you're not good enough to come in. And I can almost hear the anguished cries of the ideas: but you don't know me, you haven't even seen me at work, how can you judge my value without giving it some attention? And yet, he does.

No, not you. Nor you. In fact, to be on the safe side, none of you.

The ideas recede and the rest is silence. He's happy and proud; he's done his job of keeping bad or dangerous ideas out of the ideas room.

He's also completely oblivious that the room is silent and empty of inspiration, that I'm in there waiting for some idea – any idea of any quality – to come in so we can start talking together. He doesn't understand that no idea passes through this room without being transformed first. He has no knowledge of the process of meeting, talking, playing, being together that goes on in here.

I can hear feet pattering up to the door, mumbled pleading, then sadness. The feet withdraw back down the corridor into the darkness.

And I'm left facing a blank page, an empty screen. Nothing. No inspiration to write today.

Sorry.