Black hole of the brain

A warm welcome to today's guest blogger, Tina Pinson!

I was writing away the other morning, my thoughts tripping all over themselves as a story wound its way across the fibers of my brain. My fingers flew to get the words down on as fast I could.

Then suddenly, I stopped.

Why? To do research? A bathroom break? No. Because I couldn't think of one little word. Perhaps it wasn't so little as it would tie my thoughts together nicely and concisely. J

I tapped restively on the keyboard. Bit my bottom lip and thought. What is that word? Here word.

And if that isn't irritating enough, the more I tried to think of the word, the more I forgot other words.

I swear… there's a deep dark hole in the back of my skull sucking up all my words, never to let me recall them again.

Now we've heard about black holes, they regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong, nothing, light included, can escape.

And light, a zap of inspiration, imagination, of something, is what I need.

Stories have been written about travelers getting caught in blackholes and warped to some other worlds or time.

I was warped right into a world of the nothingness, staring at my computer screen like a hypnotized lab experiment, waiting for the deep black space somewhere in my cerebral cortex to set my mind free.

I will myself to write. What's the word for…? (imagine the sound of a big vacuum here) It's gone.

How do you describe…? (sucking sound again) It's gone.

I can't write a complete thought. My fingers bent and poised over the keys, I stare at the screen, certain something will flash in the blue static of my mind and paint itself on the blue of my computer screen.

The words don't come.

They're there somewhere. I know. I put them in the files of my mind myself. Have used them before.

Where did they go? Why do they feel locked away out of reach?

I didn't expect my mind to open a black chasm, a word sucking void and not let my words flow forth when I needed them.

I've even done puzzles and gorged on books and information just to energize my brain. To learn. Now I feel like an orator standing in front of crowded theater who has just drawn a blank from nerves.

I have no audience to think of sitting in their underwear though, to calm my nerves and free my mind.

How does one write pithy verbiage if their mind steals all the words away?

Is this a sign that time marches on and I'm getting older? Or has my brain soaked up so much information it took a brain dump to clear space?

Doubtful on both counts.

So I continue to hunt for the words and hope that they haven't gotten lost in the black of my brain.

All I can say at times like this is… Thank heavens for the Thesaurus.

What do you do to energize your brain to help you remember? To spur your thoughts on to write?



  1. Tina, I love your post! It's super frustrating when you know what word you want, and you can almost feel it on your tongue, but it refuses to appear. I thought it only happens to me, LOL!

  2. Oh, that happens all the time! :) You describe it so well... I wander off and do something else. Normally, I have a four year old pulling at me repeating "mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommmy", which explains why all the words the fly to my head are inappropriate. ;)

    1. I remember babysitting three kids along with my three boys all five and under I think I lost so many words I was reduced to ga ga ga.


  3. Oh, so funny! Grabbing that word... Sometimes I just type any word and go back to it because the longer I stew the deeper that black hole gets!

  4. Maria, Thanks for letting me ... Uh forgot the word,

    Tina P.

  5. I think Tina's black hole in her brain is so strong it's sucking the words away from my muse.:)

    Seriously, in my case, there's another reason. Tina, I'm just having fun with you.:)


  6. Carolyn, I have to steal words wherever I can get them. :-)

  7. My favorite dinosaur is the The-saurus. I love the reverse dictionary, too.


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