Thoughts, ideas, and tomatoes Mar15 '04
I keep a text file on my hard drive that looks like a newspaper exploded all over the place. In this text file is a sporadic mess of words, sentences, and short paragraphs. Intermixed with some HTML tags (paragraph, list, and my own divs), it often appears as a piece of art on it’s own. Similar to an artist’s canvas, it’s full of colored strokes, subtle shadows, and unbalanced white space.
The reality of this text file is that it is actually a canvas of mine, or a drawing board. Floating around without making a sound are incomplete thoughts, random mind spurts, and wishful prose. Some of these pre–topics get enhanced, modified, and strengthened – until they eventually grow into formidable, structured pieces of writing that end up on this web site. Others... well... others never see the light of day. A good idea one day is a pointless idea the next day.
You see, some ideas are brilliant at first, but lose luster rather quickly. For example, our dreams seem real while we act out in them – but when we wake, our physical surrounding comes back into focus, and we laugh at how implausible it all was. Of course, bad dreams take much longer to dissipate from our thoughts.
A good thought is also similar to that plump, shiny, deep red tomato that we picked from the garden, but let sit in the fridge for weeks, and is now wilty, wrinkled, shrunken, and color–less.
Despite this inevitable meltdown of possiblities, there are ideas that hold strong, and gain momentum in a hurry. For every ten ideas, only one actually grows. This one idea is a small seed, that only grows with persistent attention. The end product is a fluent, solid, and "picture perfect" piece of writing – one that completely envelops the maximum intensity of the thought at that moment in time.
This is the ultimate goal of writing. This is the ultimate climax. If a writer can capture the moment exactly as she sees it in her head, it becomes more than just words.
Most entries on this site are the result of extensive thought and research. Believe it or not, a lot time goes into each entry. A lot of brainstorming. My text file is just one example of the various blurps of imagination and serenity that come with a beautiful thought.
If only I could complete each one before the luster fades. I can only try.
Categories: Miscellaneous 
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is published and produced by Matt Thommes - an independent publishing enthusiast, mobile blogger, content creator, informative writer, web developer from Chicago.
Never one to conform, Matt intends to promote the effect the web has on our lives, in an effort to intensify, instruct, and clarify all that is happening around us.
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