THE UNIVERSAL CREATIVE STRUGGLE

I Want to Write About Everything and Nothing at the Same Time

I’ve got 99 ideas but none of them are “The One”

Flexing the creative muscle is not easy.

In fact, it’s really, really difficult. I’ve been writing down ideas that pop into my head since I can remember. When I was a teenager, I was a voracious reader who couldn’t cram words, stories, and worlds into my brain — my Dad was kind enough to take me to Borders once a week to get a book or two, and sometimes that didn’t even sustain me for the next seven days.

I resorted to buying the biggest books possible because I figured they would last me the longest, so I ended up with 700-page tomes all around my bedroom, with me trying to figure out which one to dig into first.

They were all different genres, and I didn’t discriminate, so long as they were over 300 pages. I also found that due to their length, I loved the aspect of legacy that came with them. The author has time to walk you through all of their world-building, so that by the time you’re done, you’re left with a book hangover and you don’t know what to do with your life when you reach the last page because the life you’ve been living has suddenly vanished.

This was when I decided I needed to write the books I wanted to read.

I turned to NaNoWriMo to do it. It’s short for National Novel Writing Month, and the goal is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. That means that if you divide that 50,000 by 30, you are writing about 1,667 words per day in order to stay on track.

Or, if you’re like me, you write 1,700 the first day and feel very accomplished, struggle on to stay on track for six more days, angrily quit for two, then furiously write for four more — until things semi-even out again.

Somehow I’ve managed to do this successfully twice.

I self-published one book under a pseudonym and I have about six sitting in book purgatory, waiting to see the light of day again — but I’m just not ready to take a look at them again. To write the book you want to read, you have to be in the right place, and I think I’m still missing some life experience necessary to finish them the way they deserve to be written.

These books came from somewhere, but sometimes I’m still not sure where.

I think all writers out there are constantly searching for the secret of inspiration, capturing it, and accurately describing it so readers can experience what you’re trying to tell them.

Maybe that’s the magic of it — that we can almost get there, but it’s almost better if we don’t know.

When inspiration does strike, where do you keep it?

It’s hard to capture lightning in a bottle — and even harder to capture a writer’s idea as they frantically search for paper, a pen, a computer, a phone — anything where they can write down whatever strikes them.

I’ve found this always happens at the most inconvenient times — when you’re in the freezer aisle of the grocery store, or about to fall asleep. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been this close to falling asleep, and wham, here comes an idea.

I’ll remember it in the morning, I tell myself, as I try to drift off to sleep — something that’s not easy for me to do in the first place with my extremely active imagination.

Sometimes I do, most times I don’t.

If I don’t roll over immediately and grab my phone to throw it hastily together in a note with some sort of semblance of sense, I’ll lose it forever — an idea that could have been.

However, sometimes I look at my notes later on and wonder, what was I thinking? In the middle of the night it was my next great success, and with morning light — it might just be nonsense. Usually if I actually want to write about it, I have to find the middle ground.

Writer’s notebooks:

When I was younger, this was definitely my preferred method of keeping everything together. I still have probably 25 of them sitting next to my bed in a drawer, each with a title for their own book.

I still love looking through them, and one day I’ll pick them back up again, but with a fresh perspective.

It’s also a time-capsule of what my handwriting looked like, and what pen I had around — that in itself holds a little bit of magic.

Scraps of paper:

I have a weird issue with planners. And notebooks. They feel too perfect and until I break them in, I don’t want to write in them. It’s a bizarre paradox, so I took to using yellow legal pads. I have some of my best plot ideas written on yellow legal pads also in the drawer with the writer’s notebooks.

It’s crazy how the medium (ha, ha) on which you choose to write has an impact on the ideas — or one might feel more authentic to the topic than another.

Ideas are time sensitive:

It’s not only seconds and hours that count when getting the ideas down somewhere they’ll last. It’s months and years, because they will all play out differently the more you change. Yes, I can pick those books up again, but will they have the same feel, theme, and perspective as when I first thought about them? No. Is that a bad thing? Nope.

I’m different. I’ve lived more life since then — I’ve lived more life since yesterday. If I had written this article then, it might be similar, but I’ve had a whole 24 hours since my last article, and I’ve grown, even if I’ve just been inside all day.

Don’t give up on them:

Just because you heard a song and had to drop everything to write down your thoughts, or you had a scene pop into your head while brushing your teeth — but then forgot all about it or the context doesn’t mean it’s dead in the water.

I find that when I think about my ideas, they tend to spiral and come to life, without me even trying to do anything.

Don’t force it:

I’m not going to lie to you. I was pretty grumpy before I wrote this article. I’m on day 7/30 of my writing every day challenge (like NaNoWriMo but for articles — thank God I don’t have a daily word count) and I couldn’t figure out what to write. My articles have been a mix of funny, light, and introspective.

That’s who I am.

Write you.

Don’t be ashamed or afraid of it even if it seems like people won’t like it, or aren’t responding the way you expect.

Give it the time it deserves, and I guarantee even you will be pleasantly surprised at what comes out.

You’re creative — you were born to create, and the deluge of ideas that will start to come out of you when you start to listen to them can be overwhelming, but treat them kindly.

Write them down in a way that feels right, acknowledge them, and give them space.

They will grow, and so will you.

I once blocked out my creative side because I was trolled endlessly by people on the internet who didn’t have anything better to do than to pull me down because they were upset by the thing I had created.

I don’t recommend that to anyone — not the inciting or responding to the anger of the troll army — but blocking out who you really are.

So, take those 99 ideas and ponder them. Let them all take over, even if you can’t choose one — and open up that keyboard. Put a pen to paper. Pick up that instrument. Get out your paint. Go make that video. Create that app. Code, code, code. Put film in your camera. Plant the seed. Go for a walk.

Do what inspires you, even if you’re not sure where to start.

I’m excited to see where it takes you!

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