Wistful Wednesday

Too Many Ideas?

Have you ever found yourself in this predicament? You want to write or create something and you find yourself with - too many ideas? What? Too many ideas! How is that possible?

If you are a writer, you have probably heard of the term "writer's block" - a condition that cripples the writer into producing nothing but a blank page. Well, sometimes, I have the opposite problem - too many ideas - that often produces the same result. I have so much to write about, I don't know which idea to start with, so I just...don't. I hem, I haw, I conduct research for yet another idea, but I don't actually write.

Such is my problem now. I have so many ideas for stories in my head, I just don't know which one to concentrate on first. The next installment in Dante's story. The series about the shapeshifters and the empath fighting a sinister Institute intent on exploiting them. The YA story about the plain girl in love with the popular boy next door. Oh, a nice Regency love story a la Jane Austen sounds good right about now, too...

See my dilemma? And now, with the advent of NaNo, the pressure to produce words has only increased. What do I do now? Somebody help me!

No, seriously, if you have any advice for me, please comment! And now, write.

Wistful Wednesday

Hitting the Wall (of Creativity)

If you are a writer, or any other type of artist, do you ever have one of those days when you just hit the wall creatively? Where, no matter what you do or how hard you try, you just can't seem to come up with anything meaningful? Well, that is what lead me to choosing today's blog topic. After sitting around all morning, my mind a total blank as to what to write about today, I thought, Why not write about the fact that I can't find anything to write about? That's the beauty of this blog thing: You can't take virtually anything and create a post around it. And hopefully, in the process, you can work through the issues that plague you.

Ask any writer if they've ever experienced hitting the wall and you will probably hear a groan in response, followed by a lamentable tale of one such experience - maybe more. It is one of the things we secretly fear, for when we hit the wall creatively, we end up staring at the same blank page for days on end and there is nothing worse for a writer than the blank page. At least not in my experience. Rejection? That's okay, I'll send my work off to someone else. A bad review? Well, I guess my book just wasn't to their taste. A blank page? Kill me now. Just kidding! But sometimes, it does feel like a little death when the Muse goes on vacation and doesn't leave a forwarding address.

So how does one deal with the hitting the wall syndrome? For me, it's a matter of doing something else to take my mind off the problem for awhile. Long walks are good, cleaning house is okay, but for me, the best way to release my mind and invite in creativity is to do something...creative. When I'm not writing, I can usually be found making something. As I often say to my mother, I love taking a pile of nothing and making something out of it, whether it's a blank page and a pen that becomes a novel, or a pile of scraps that become a blanket, or skeins of yarn that become scarves, hats, sweaters or the like. My favorite creative thing to do (other than writing) is knitting. I absolutely love knitting, especially when I have someone specific in mind for what I am making. Not only do you end up with something beautiful, you also free your mind from the general chaos of life through the repetitive pattern of knitting. In fact, while working on an afghan for my daughter this morning, I was able to free my mind enough to come up with this blog post! Many times before, I have managed to work out so many tricky plot points by diverting myself with knitting. So for me, it serves a dual purpose: I make something nice and work out issues in my writing!

What about you? Have you ever hit that wall creatively? What do you do when you hit the wall? I'd love to know!

My Muse is on Steroids

I have a problem. As you can probably tell from the title of this post, my problem is inspiration. Too much inspiration. I am literally brimming with ideas for new stories, each vying for the right to be written first. It's like a pay-per-view boxing match and my mind is the arena. Just the other day, for instance, I was struck by inspiration twice in the same day - for two totally different (style, genre) books - that I just had to start right then or else risk losing the idea. What's wrong with this? Well, nothing, except for the fact that these new ideas are vying for supremacy over the ones I already have in the works.

Now normally, I wouldn't be bothered by this sudden influx of creativity. I know how quixotic creativity can be. Some days, you have absolutely nothing to work with and others, well, you already know about that, don't you? But my sudden surge in creativity is coming at an inopportune time for me. For one thing, my younger daughter's computer finally died a quiet death, so now I have to compete with her for time on my computer. For another thing, that same daughter has some medical and dental issues that have been eating up a lot of my time lately. So of course my muse would pick this time to pump up on steroids and flood my mind with a bevy of ideas that I just have to write now. Oh, well, at least I'll have these ideas to work on when my muse takes a cruise in the winter.

So my question to you is, has this ever happened to you and how did you handle it? If you have an suggestions for me on how to wrangle my muse or at least corral these ideas, I would greatly appreciate it. ~ Margay