Writer’s block, or lack of it, in a random airport in Europe

A good friend and co-blogger asked me a question a few days ago; “How do you decide what to write about? How do you know which ideas is best?”. I thought about it for a second, but could not really give him a proper answer, because the truth is; it just happens. I will get lots of ideas, and which ones I do end up converting into a blog post depends on the combination of a good – or mediocre, or even bad – idea, and the initiative and time to sit down and put it into words. So there is no strategy, no secret plan. It just feels right, sometimes, to ramble down a few words. I would not at all call myself a writer, but I enjoy it, it seems like my friends and family enjoys it – so I will definitely keep it up! And you want to know a secret? I post everything I write. No time to be self-aware or -critical. I write it, proof-read it once – and post it the next time I find an internet connection. Those who knows me is probably aware of that if I started being self-critical, there would be no blog…

At the moment I am sitting in a quiet part of some European airport – as quiet as an airport can possibly be. I do believe it is Amsterdam Schiphol, but then again, for the last two days I have only slept a couple of short crammed-in-an-airplane-seat-naps – so I could really be anywhere. There’s two hours until my plane leaves for Oslo, and since airports in general is a perfect place for people-spotting, hence inspiration, hence blog posts and other artsy stuff, I thought I’d try to ramble down something.  But the question of how I decide what to write about stuck with me. What will be the best idea? The cute little kid in a chair shaped like a giant (compared to the kid) giraffe right in front of me, would he make a good starting point for a post? Or how about the impossibility of getting a carb-free meal on an airplane? All those people totally stressed out, running from tax-free to tax-free to buy as much cheap liquor as possible before their plane leaves? Or I could write about the interesting evolution – and subsequent disappearance – of my fear of flying? But what would be best? What would captivate my audience most? And with these thoughts in mind, I keep on rambling, and have managed to write yet another blog post. Reading it through in a minute, I will probably realize it was one of the less successful ones, and that writing about the baby in the giraffe chair would have been much more interesting. But I am gonna keep up the trend of posting everything I write. Even when it’s probably not interesting.

Darn you for doing this to me, Alex.

First of all, the kid was really cute, and the giraffe chair was such an absurd thing to put it in. And the fascinating thing was that this kid was not at all aware that he – or she, who can tell – was sitting in a weird chair. The kid was quite content, with both the chair and the food in front of him, and did not all notice that his parents were all stressed out and wanting to run from tax-free to tax-free to buy cheap liquor, but could not due to the fact that their kid needed to eat and the only place he could do so was an elephant chair. Sorry, giraffe.

Same as idea number one, but I would focus on the parents – and this would be in a world without giraffe chairs.

I was never scared as a kid. Then I was. Now I’m not. I do have a lot of near-death stories about my flights – like when I was in a twelve-seat plane about to land in a thunderstorm, in Bolivia, 3000 meters above sea level. The only thing keeping me from total panic was the fact that this airline only owned one plane. Loosing it would mean going out of business.

Would not have been any interesting. And I had breakfast between part 1 and 2 of the post, so I am not hungry anymore and thus not annoyed with the airline offering a breakfast consisting of 98% sugar and 2% undefined goo.

As mentioned I have not slept properly for soon-to-be 48 hours and I am not sure I would be able to convey my enthusiasm in a blog post. I am crazy happy. Just not able to write about it.

Nah.

On the concept of listening to christmas music in general, and the song “Driving home for christmas” in particular, when one is in a random European airport, traveling home for christmas. Would require almost as much enthusiasm as # 5, so it’s not gonna happen right now.

I do not think I am suffering from a particular writer’s block. Alex, you’re forgiven.

COMMENTS FROM OLD BLOG:

What writer’s block? I don’t think that was ever a problem with you. And why am I getting blamed for things all of a sudden? 

Blog on, lady.