This time last weekend, I was feeling despondent. Not the wider blue of this post, but the specific blue of having a story deadline coming up and feeling absolutely bereft of ideas and words.
Lost in a desert, empty of words, dead of ideas, not a shred of creativity remaining. Not a unique feeling by any means, but still frustrating. Frustrating af, actually.
On Tuesday morning, I threw my hands in the air and went to my go-to-for-inspiration book, Neil Gaiman's The View from the Cheap Seats.
Indi poses for me.
This is a collection of his non-fiction writings - intros, prefaces, speeches and the like - all reflecting in some way on the process of writing, creativity and the writers and writings he admires. For whatever reason, it's a book that I find easy to dip in and out of. It inspired me to write 'The Diamond Taster', one of the stories I'm proudest of in my Falling into the Five Senses anthology (see the full story here).
I browsed and read, among others, his famous Make Good Art piece.
Things bubbled during the day. Easily in the background, as work and family life predominated.
Ideas, kind of, surfaced. Slowly. In two quite different directions.
I reigned in my impatience on Tuesday night and didn't try to force the percolation.
Wednesday morning - thanks in large part to LittleOne generously deciding to have a sleep-in - I knocked out my first idea. It was an idea, it mostly worked and it did the job. I didn't love it. But it was fantastic to have something - anything - solid out of my fingertips a mere two days of having nothing at all.
LittleOne kept sleeping and I was on a roll. So I kept writing. I didn't change out of my document. Didn't want to do any symbolic finish-one-doc-start-another move which could disrupt my flow. New page, and I just kept going. I wrote up the second idea... longer than the first. Looking back, I think this one flowed quite quickly. I finished it and loved it.
Adored it, in fact. It was too long and didn't quite work for the deadline, but that was beside the point. In one morning, I went from having zip, to two things that a) I finished and b) one of which I really loved.
But I still had my deadline and nothing that really fitted the brief. On Thursday morning, I tried to write again. Beneath the first two ideas, a third idea had been shimmering in the background. I'd been so focused on coaxing the first two into life, I'd barely registered this third idea. On Thursday morning, I wrote up the third idea.
Cue the singing chorus of angels. The idea worked for the deadline, I enjoyed writing it, and it was a pretty good 'un! And it got done well ahead of deadline (a rarity for me)!
Three ideas written up in one week, a mere couple of days after thinking all the 'why-am-I-bothering-with-this-writing-thing-I-never-have-any-good-ideas-and-I'm-too-slow-and-sucky-at-writing-and-it's-all-a-waste-of-time' thoughts.
I suppose my morale of the story is: don't give up. Let the streams of negative thoughts come, and make sure they keep going. Don't dam them around my head.
Find ways to continue to nurture my creativity, including the tried and tested methods. If I'm somehow worried that I can over-use the magic in The View from the Cheap Seats and drain it dry (yes, I do worry about this), then fortunately for me, Mr Gaiman has provided an ocean's worth of magic words to swim in, read from and be inspired.
And if it keeps working, don't overthink it!
Du fond du coeur x
It's always interesting to see the challenges writer friends face. For me, it's all about focus/energy/time, I have plenty of ideas (too many someone would say, myself included) and it's all about stopping long enough to finish one before hunting for more shiny stuff. It's also interesting the point I converge with other creative folk and Neil's View from the Cheap Seats is definitely a great option as is Neil in general. Here's to always pushing through, no matter the crisis and doing what makes us smile. As for you, finished the collection and loved your stories, so keep at it for you do in fact make good art. Cheers
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading, JD! I find it useful to jot down these sorts of writing breakthroughs to help remind me that writing (and creativity in general) doesn't have a one long angst-fest. That it can be joyful, speedy and flowing too. Hurray for all the people and elements out there who frequently remind me of this - including Mr Neil Magic Gaiman and Mr Joie De Vivre Estrada :-)
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