There it was again. That fleeting, fragmented idea skipping sideways through my mind. With a growl of impatience, I half-turn, blocking my mental view of the partially formed idea.
Not so fast.
The idea is back, this time holding a sibling idea by the hand. It's impossible not to watch them. They're multiplying, their shapes changing, flashing, filling in and fading out. Kaleidoscopes of possibility.
To a writer, this is a familiar situation. Ideas come all the time, and usually when you least want them or are not prepared to handle them. The only way for me to control the river of ideas is to put them down on paper. Which ultimately results in four full-fledged first-draft novels, a 30-plus page document of novel ideas, a computer file of fragmented stories, a desk so full I can't open the drawers, and a mind bursting from new, unrecorded thoughts.
Channeling my creative writing ideas has always been a work in process. One way to manage it is NaNoWriMo, a flash-flood of writing so fast and forceful that the ideas don't have time to build and gather dust in the corners of my mind. It's the other 11 months, November aside, that bother me.
Editing novels is a process I enjoy, but it's very different than writing. You are re-shaping ideas, adding new ones, but there is little room for the raw creation experienced in the first draft. But I'm still getting ideas for new stories, temptations to waver and go off on some new project.
What I'm really learning is how to use the ideas I have on the book I'm working on. Every idea gets shaped, honed, to fit into the story, strengthening it, deepening it. Adding to it.
Writing is a game. Like chess. Thinking several moves ahead, planning the next attack, the next move that will leave your reader's mental gears turning. You can't let a single move go by. Every turn has to count.
There's only one rule in the writing game.
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