Writing a column is like drawing a picture; instead of using paints or crayons, though, I use words.

An idea for a column usually comes in a flash, when I least expect it: upon waking from a dreamy pre-dawn slumber or following a lunch hour swim at the pool near my workplace. The idea is usually fleeting, intangible, like the time my boss complimented me for turning off the conference room light at the end of a workday.

Unknowingly, his comment triggered a weeklong rumination about my father and his Depression-era frugality. This eventually led to a column about my dad's influence in my life, which, through the years, always seemed overshadowed by that of my mother's.

With an idea as the foundation, I begin to build a column, word upon word, thought upon thought, feeling upon feeling. And even though I think I know what I'm going to say, I am never certain of the path the words will take.

Oftentimes I discover things along the way, like a forgotten childhood memory or a sudden intuitive understanding that takes me by surprise.

In the column about my father, I began only knowing that I wanted to write something about him; in writing it, though, I came to understand how much like him I had become. And only after reading the column in the newspaper the following weekend did I realize that after more than a decade of writing about family, it was the first I had written about my dad.

Sometimes as I write, I get lost along the way. Other times, words fail me, and I am left to try again, or if the deadline is near, to settle for something less than I had hoped to achieve.

Through the years, I have come to trust that something will come, especially if I am quiet long enough to hear what it is that I want to say. Somehow, something within nudges me forward and the words fall into place.

Through the years, I have written hundreds of columns, but I begin each assignment with trepidation, fearful that my idea really isn't worth the effort or that, after all my writing, I have run out of things to say.

It's a hollow, unsettling feeling, one that troubles me each time I begin to write.

To ease those fears, I have taken to following certain rituals that hopefully will draw the Muses to my side.

What are those rituals? Like the baseball player who is reluctant to reveal the superstitions he follows to help him in his game, I dare not reveal mine, as a Muse's power might be diminished in the telling.

In the end, though, I write because I have to write, driven by a need to express myself with words. And never far from my thoughts are the readers who take the time to read what it is that I have to say.

Linda K. Schmitmeyer is a freelance writer living in Middlesex Township. Her e-mail address is schmitmeyer@zoominternet.net.