I, my dear friends, am a project bouncer. All too often I’m struck with a lightning bolt of creativity that fuels me roughly for a week only to dissipate as quickly as It came.
And so I’m left with a story concept that is pushed to the back shelf that is already crowded with other dead ideas and concepts that I l tell myself I’ll get to later. And of course, later never comes.
I think the most frustrating bit about this aspect of personality is that fact that I always feel like I’m overflowing with ideas and yet I don’t actually get anything done. After the end of a creative jolt I’m left with nothing but a vague character description and plot outline and a blank word document. It’s like I’m encountering writers block before I’ve even started. I can’t focus on one idea long enough and everything feels like it’ll result in a dead end.
But, as I’ve come to figure out, my problem isn’t necessarily the time that I have with an idea that’s giving me issues. It’s the way I use it.
You see, if you’re anything like me, your creative eureka! Moments happen often frequently but they are fleeting. Generally what I do with this time is... well nothing. And that, my dear friends, is my problem. I squander my creative bursts on... daydreaming? Nothing productive anyway.
So here’s how I combatted this issue. The solution was really simple actually.
Every inspiring idea and concept that comes to my head revolving around this topic, I write down. Everything. All the random bits of dialogue, all the random character details, the scenes... all of it.
And needed to put to use my creative energy right away. I needed to stop “letting it simmer” because that leads to me burning out. I learned that I needed to take advantage of this flash of inspiration and actually WRITE. There’s no room for perfection. I just need to DO it cause pretty soon I’m going to loose steam and that’ll be the end of it.
And, so, by the end of a weeks time (and my creative high), I should have the hardest part of the story out of the way; the beginning. And if I can get that down, I can run with it and see where the story takes me.
“The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else, but keep heart, it will turn out all right.”
~Vincent Van Gogh