Nebulas, cosmic clouds made of gas and dust, are often referred to as star factories. Though there is nothing to grasp, these interstellar regions often give birth to stars.
Ask any writer, and she’ll tell you that stories, too, take birth in the nebulas of the mind. To begin with, there is nothing but gas and dust – vague notions, fuzzy images, or perhaps a few fleeting ideas.
And that makes writing a story’s first draft tricky. It’s like moulding air into shapes. There’s nothing to grasp!
But there’s a way to take the pressure off. What if we thought of the first draft as a process to arrive at a ‘real’ problem? All you’re doing is adding water to the dust cloud, and your only aim is to end up with a wet lump of clay.
It’s not much, but at least you can touch and feel it. And then, you can spin it on the potter’s wheel to create shapely stories.
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