Why Writing Normal-ish Now and Then Keeps the Creative Kettle Boiling

Let’s be honest, dear reader: if you spend all your days writing about purple elephants in bowler hats and penguins who recite Shakespeare, your brain will eventually start to resemble a bowl of alphabet soup—delightful, but impossible to alphabetise.

Sometimes, you must write something normal-ish. Not entirely normal, mind you (that would be dangerous), but just normal-ish enough to keep the creative cogs from grinding to a halt and demanding a union meeting.

You see, creativity is a bit like a kettle. If you keep it on the boil all the time, it will either whistle incessantly or explode, covering the kitchen in a fine mist of Earl Grey and regret.

Writing normal-ish is like taking the kettle off the stove for a moment. It lets the steam settle, so when you put it back on, it’s ready to whistle a brand new tune—perhaps in the key of Q.

I once tried writing nothing but nonsense for a week. By Thursday, my left eyebrow had started composing limericks, and my right shoe insisted on being addressed as “Sir Wellington.” It was then I realised: a dash of the ordinary is the yeast in the bread of absurdity. Without it, your loaf won’t rise, and you’ll be left with a soggy lump of surrealism.

So, write a shopping list. Compose a letter to your aunt about her garden gnome. Describe, in excruciating detail, the way your neighbour’s cat blinks at precisely 3:17 p.m. each day. These little forays into the normal-ish are like stretching before a marathon of madness. They keep your words limber and your mind from running off with the circus (unless, of course, you want it to).

In conclusion, don’t be afraid of the normal-ish. Embrace it, tickle it under the chin, and let it remind you that even the wildest imagination needs a place to hang its hat. Then, when you return to your purple elephants and Shakespearean penguins, you’ll find them waltzing with renewed vigour across the ballroom of your mind.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my kettle is whistling in Morse code, and I think it’s trying to tell me something about my next poem.