When Your Mind Was Empty

When Your Mind Was Empty

The way it used to be
You'd sit at the desk
Feathered pen in heavy hand
Waiting for the words to come
Waiting for inspiration.

The way it used to be
When your mind was empty; deprived of all thought
You'd start to write
The scratching of the pen
Spreading it's blots of ink across the yellow page
Angrily you'd crumple your paper with a satisfying sound
And throw it across the room
But the next empty page awaited you
Mocking you in the face of your emptiness
Still you're waiting for the words to come
Waiting for inspiration.

The way it used to be
You'd sit at the desk
The typewriters' clicking¾now silent
Waiting. for. the. words. to. come.
Waiting for inspiration.

The way it used to be
When your mind was empty
You'd start to type, and lose the thought
You'd tear the page out of the hungry metal jaws
The typewriter denied of its' pray
You'd throw your spoiled page towards the 'wastebasket'
But it never quite made it there
Leaving you a floor littered
With spoiled hopes and dreams
Still-waiting-for-the-words-to-come
Waiting for inspiration.

It's not the way it used to be:
Sitting at your desk
Waiting...waiting...fo...for...the words to...to come,
Waiting for inspiration.

It's not the way it used to be
When your mind is empty
The computer's blank screen
Stares at you, somehow mocking
With the cursor blinking
Its' infuriating rhythm
on the whiteness of your blank screen
When you have no words in you
There is no satisfaction in pressing
A small 'backspace' button
One small motion and your mistakes are gone
No wonder we are an arrogant people
When it is so easy for us to convince the world
That we never sat, minds blank
Waiting for the words to come
Waiting for inspiration.

First of all, welcome to YWS! I believe you critiqued one of my stories, so I ought to return the favor, no?

I read this last night out loud, and it's pretty cool. That is, it flows very well and all that jazz, which is a good thing. Just a couple of things...

First of all, I can appreciate the repetition, if only because writer's block is insanely repetitious and SO ANNOYING. Which is a good thing to convey. But there were times that I thought you overdid it. For example, these lines:

Waiting for the words to come
Waiting for inspiration.

I'm mostly a storywriter, so this may seem a little bizarre, but usually in stories, you only repeat when it's important. But, always, to make it seem less annoying, you always repeat it in a different way. Sometimes you might change the wording, other times you'll change the format (it might be fun to play with italics or something here! ) and still oher times, you'll play with more stuff. It's fun! So instead of repeating the same line, play a game with yourself. Repeat the line... except don't. Make it different. What could you do next to make it more meaningful? Italicize it? Change the wording? Change the punctuation?

Punctuation is fun to play with, by the way! These lines:

Waiting for the words to come
Waiting for inspiration.

...can turn into this:

Waiting. For. The. Words. To. Come.
Waiting for inspiration?

Maybe a bit overdone, but that makes it a lot jerkier, which makes the reader wonder what the writer is doing. Maybe bashing his head into the wall?

Anyway, I think you can have a lot of fun with this piece, so just play around with it until you come up with something fun. And let us see it!

Hope that helps!

welcome to yws=) lol i found your poem most ammusing. as if all of us can not relate to this hahahaha.

Actually i think your form of repetition there starts a classic feeling for suspensfull drama.

Congradulations i enjoyed reading the poem very much.

keep writing =) happy reading (=

Well...I'll welcome you too, since everyone else is XD and I liked your poem. I don't usually like free verse, they tend to lose sence about halfway through and degenerate into lines of...well, thought. And lose the 'poemness', if you get what I mean.

Angrily you'd crumple your paper with a satisfying sound
And throw it across the room
But the next empty page awaited you
Mocking you in the face of your emptiness

Brilliant. I love that part, the amount of times I get the -urge- to write, but NOTHING ends up on the paper. It's frustrating, to say the least

The computer's blank Word

This one line just like...halted the flow of the poem for me and I had to blink, go back and reread it. I get it now, you're talking about a program...but still, it was like a jutter, a sour note in an otherwise wonderful chord. And sorry for the metaphore XD

~Chibi

I think you need to change a few things.

"Waiting...waiting...fo...for...the words to...to come," should probably be changed to, Waiting...waiting...for...for...the words to...to come,"


"clicking¾now" I believe you ment, "clicking, now."

There is one little thing I do not understand. Why do you first talk about paper and pens, then typewriters, and then computers? You don't show that time has gone forward from point A to B to C.


You give the impression that you forgot what time period you are writing about. Maybe you did and maybe you didn't. Either way you need to show that time has passed, or you need to change you piece.


Jearjioe