banausic (buh-NAW-sik, -zik) adjective

Mechanical, utilitarian or routine, as opposed to inspiring or imaginative.

Heh, heh. I wonder why I could relate to this word. I bet every writer can. I bet every creator can.

There's this call among us creative types to write something that is absolutely magnificent. Something that will make the world nod with us in agreement. Something that will make them understand us. So we put a pen to paper. We ruminate and compost, turn and toss and chew on ideas at lengths that would bore a cow, and in the end the most frustrating thing is to turn out a banausic piece that we don't have the courage to let anyone else read.

But save it.

The thing is, you may just not have at the moment the dressing you need to bring that piece out of the banausic realm and into the ah-ha realm. And you know, I'm learning the more I write that sometimes it's the simple things that sound utilitarian or routine that do the most good. Because sometimes when we're trapped in the mechanical sort of things that fill our days over and over and over again, we'll read something that reaffirms that we are not alone. That others have the same struggles, the same fears, the same bore-you-to-tears routine, and somehow they survive. Or they learn how to overcome it for a minute, or an hour, or a month, or a lifetime. They shine a light down our trail so that we can see the stumbling blocks or the paradise that lurks in the shadows.

In turn we can shine that light for others. The words may seem banausic, but that doesn't mean they can't be arranged creatively. That sparks of personality can't shine through and brighten someone else's path. You know that saying about one man's trash being another's treasure. I think that sometimes our "stuff" becomes junk in that it's just too familiar. Set it out on the curb and it will be exactly what someone else is looking for. Your words can be that way too.

So it doesn't matter how banausic the piece seems. How mechanical, routine or unimaginative the words spill, let them spill. Maybe you'll get creative as you wipe them up, dust them off, rearrange them. But it's better to have them to manipulate than be faced with the blank page.

Write, write, write, write, write. (Very banausic phrasing, wouldn't you say?)

:)