Creativity Failure

I spent a decent amount of time this week drafting a new story. It was set in a post-apocalyptic world, where a cataclysm had turned the landscape into glass. My two protagonists, a weaver, who had failed to prevent the cataclysm, and an oven cleaner, whose daughter is injured by protection racketeers, seemed interesting, perhaps even entertaining.

The problem was this: The world did not inform the story. As a result, I ended up with a simple tale of revenge, albeit one that re-energised my characters. There was no reason whatsoever that this story couldn't have been set in the real world, present day.

I want to write speculative fiction. I want new ideas, both big and small, to make a difference to my characters. So this story will remain incomplete, and tomorrow I'll start a new one.

Writing Again

Close to 11pm on a Sunday night. Clearly the best time to start writing again. Screw it. I've never been a morning person. So this is me resuming an earlier project. One that, to my annoyance, was too long to be used for a fiction assignment and too short to be used for my dissertation. I mean I loved those projects, but this is something else: the first short story that might actually be good enough to send out. Reading my earlier submissions, it's obvious why no one in their right mind would touch them. This one will be different.

Here's the first little chunk...

The Pressure of Ideas

It's been nine days since I handed in my dissertation. If I'm honest, I didn't feel much. I expected relief and maybe a little joy. I was denied. I spent the next few days milling around, sitting on the settee, thinking that maybe I should be getting my arse in gear and doing something. The pressure of the deadline (now passed) leapt from task to task, and in the end I forced myself to ignore it.

The weekend was good. Friends, food, a bit of booze, lieing in, relaxation. It broke the grip of stress. For a few days, I was able to relax, until I went back to work and life quickly became same old, same old.

But something is different. I'm now free to work on a project of my choosing. Of course, I've still got to take that dissertation and finish the novel, but I no longer have to ignore all those other chunks of inspiration.

For the last three months, any idea that popped into my brain, be it a scene, a character or just an image, got filed away in a Google document. This week their clamour became a roar and I realised it was time to pick my next project. That's how it works. Ideas, the ones that don't fade away, lodge somewhere and keep on nagging at you. Something has to be done with them.

It's a good feeling. A scene blazes its way across your mind. It feeds back on itself. It joins itself to others. It digs them up from the depths of your subconscious and, when there's enough to form a whole, your mind nearly implodes with the potential for awesome.

Never mind the fact that they normally turn up in the middle of a long car journey, when you're in a hurry and have no way of recording them. It's that feeling of being lost in something else, for however brief a time. It's nothing short of creation.