A Writer's Nightmare

I once wrote brain freeze, the condition commonly known as writer's block, isn't the worst thing that can happen to a writer. Writer's block is when the blank computer screen or empty page of paper stares at you and you have absolutely nothing to put on it. Having nothing to write or capture on paper or computer disk is merely the second worst thing that can happen to a writer. Seriously. Having media ready to capture thoughts and then having none is actually a blessing, as something will invariably materialize if and when your muse quits tripping through Facebook. No, the worst thing that can happen to me is when those precious, once-in-a-lifetime thoughts flash through my consciousness and I have absolutely no way to capture them. 

Those fleeting, ethereal thoughts often dissolve long before I can find a piece of paper, a napkin, anything with a margin, to hastily scribble on, losing them to eternity. If I'm lucky, a couple of days may pass and I'll remember what Inspired me, but sometimes the thoughts are simply gone. I think my muse does this to me on purpose. It waits until I'm in traffic, or having dinner in a restaurant when it slips me a thought that would pivot or anchor my whole next article, or maybe inspire an evening of ignoring my life while I write and rewrite a narrative or dialog, and then it logs on to Facebook and I'm on my own, repeating my thought over and over trying to commit it to memory.

Where was I going with this? Oh, yes, not having a way to capture those elusive, exclusive thoughts is a real pain in the neck/butt/shoulder/ass, depending on which genre the writer writes. The end result is the same: lost thoughts and concepts that will drift out and away, an ending that never happens or a character who doesn't fulfill their possibilities, headed somewhere unknown, out into the universe, hopefully to alight on someone sitting in front of a blank computer screen wondering what the hell to write.