To be able to free associate is a very useful skill. To let your mind roam freely and leap from idea to idea no matter how preposterous is helpful when you’re stuck. Start with where you are and keep track of where your mind takes you no matter where you end up. Not everything will be useful but you take what is and save the rest for another time. Never discard any of it. If worse comes to worst you can always use it for scrap paper. For example a short essay I wrote, called “Jake’s Place,” starts with the obvious and ends up with wondering about God.
The title, “Jake’s Place,” is a prompt from A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves (Novato, California: New World Library, 1999). I strongly recommend this book to writers who need help, as I do, to break through writer’s block.
Jake’s Place
There is a bar in Texas called “Jake’s Place.” How trite! But I guess it doesn’t matter where you get drunk or the name of the place you do it in. They all smell the same and alcohol is alcohol.
Restaurants have the same problem. Bob Evans is tritely country. Perkins tries to be. They all have the same desserts. Great servings of brownies with ice cream and other carboholic delights They call my name loudly and regularly. I’m beginning to think there is something to the carb addiction fad. If there is, I wonder if the only “cure” is abstinence? The problem will be staying away from the vicinity of bakeries and reporting to Carboholics Anonymous every week—or every day if necessary. What will it be like to live as if cakes do not exist? To be pure and free from the taint of dessert in all its decadent forms?
Can we lead blameless lives ? Can we be sin free? What is sin, anyway? Going against God’s wishes? But does God really care if we eat carbs? After all, bread is a carb and it’s reputed to be the staff of life. God really cares about weight if she’s a woman. But can we be sure that God is female? If God is male then the whole discussion goes down the drain?
Do you see how I started out in a bar in Texas and ended up questioning the gender of God. It was free association that led me here.
