- It's a matter of letting ideas flow by pulling that mental hairball from your creative shower plughole, rather than forcing the words to come out of your fingers, sit up straight on the page and make sense.
Mental hairball
noun; compounding
A word or phrase coughed up at random The term mental hairball is a metaphor because an actual hairball seems to be coughed up at random. Likewise, a mental hairball is a word or phrase that seems to be thought and blurted out without any apparent reason. This word seems to have been coined for great imagery. It’s much more vivid to describe something as a “mental hairball” than to say that it’s random.
Etymology : From Middle English, from Middle French, from Late Latin mentalis, from Latin ment-, mens “mind” + from Middle English her, from Old English h[AE]r, from Old High German hAr “hair” + from Middle English bal, from Old Norse bollr, from Old English bealluc “testis,” from Old High German balla “ball,” from Old English blAwan “to blow”
Source : “Writer’s Flow” by Jon Thompson
Last modified: 10 June 2008