Young Writers Project is a creative online community of teen writers, photographers and artists, which has been based in Vermont since 2006. Each week, VTDigger features the writing and art of young Vermonters who publish their work on youngwritersproject.org, a free, interactive website for 12- to 18-year-olds. To find out more, visit youngwritersproject.org, or contact Executive Director Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org and 802-324-9538.
If only we could distill and bottle creativity, study it — find out where it comes from, how best to mold it. The origin of inspiration, and where it flies off to as we ardently stretch out to grab it, is what this week’s featured writer, Ellicott Smith of Norwich, is most curious about. It turns out that the lesson to be learned is that we’re not always meant to chase after ideas; sometimes, if we open ourselves up and extend a gentler hand, they’ll drift right down.
The poem not meant to be a poem
Ellicott Smith, 15, Norwich
Where do all the ideas go; where do they come from? I wonder, staring at a blank, bland document. A great tree of life, sparkling above, forever tucked away, just out of reach? And then the leaves rain down. There! A streak, a spot, a drop of color, shifting, shifting with the tides of thought.
I reach up. At my disposal are hundreds of leaves, thousands of leaves, spinning and spiraling past, missed moments in a moment of time. They are all breathtaking. And no sooner than I reach up, they twist and dance, playing a game I do not understand. The minutes tick by. Even at the grasp of each leaf, I hesitate, and it browns, blows away, and dies. The period is over. I am left at a desk, adrift and alone. I am lost in a whirlwind of chances, each lost too.
Where does your inspiration originate? A cool stream, the ripples pulsing, trickling by?
Aha! A song without words, drowned out in a chorus of others?
A cloudless sky, a forever-blue sphere, and you, insignificant, with all your hopes and dreams, trying to glimpse the speck of a star?
Without looking up, I open myself to any possibility. Finally, a leaf, drifting down, in the eye of a storm, settles in my outstretched arms. It will do.
