Creative Genius Vs. The Keyboard

For many, the writer's struggle is not an inability to come up with ideas, it is coming up with the time and motivation to bring all of those ideas to life.

I'm the poster child for this dilemma. I have an arsenal of ideas, some great, some mediocre, some are probably cliché, but none of them has actually become a completed novel. Most don't even make it past the half-baked, incoherent iPhone note stage. 

The ones that do make it to stage 2 (random, disconnected paragraphs and sections of dialogue) have so much potential. Small excerpts of creative genius make me feel like the next J.K. Rowling! 

...And then I get to the point where I know the next big event, or where I want to characters to go, or even how the very end will be written, but I can't figure out how to get there for the life of me. 

Basically, I just sit there like this. 


For hours. Or days. Or weeks. 

I've written chapters 1-4, and 7, and the climax, and the conclusion, and the epilogue. And then there I sit. Glaring at the screen. Filled with self-loathing for my inability to finish anything.

And then I get busy and forget about the whole project altogether. There are about 23 Google Documents and Word Documents with fantastic fractions of stories on my laptop. 

I'm really good at following through, aren't I?

AND THEN IT HAPPENS AGAIN!

I get a magnificent stroke of brilliance: the greatest new idea to ever grace this good earth, a story that will captivate readers for centuries, a million-dollar concept that will change the world!!


And so it begins anew. 

So how do I fix this problem?

There are a lot of things I could do to get myself to follow through. I could force myself to write a chapter every single day, no matter what it takes, no matter how terrible the chapter may be. I could map out what to write in every chapter to give myself a roadmap. I could set aside a weekend and hammer out x amount of chapters each month. I could hold myself accountable to a friend to read my writing every week. OR I could write a blog where I include some short stories and some personal observational entries. 

I've never been great with consistency in forming habits, nor in planning or scheduling...well, anything. But I'm going to take a shot at this blogging thing. 

So what am I going to write next? I've got some ideas. 😉


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