The Writer's Garden

Took a nap this morning and woke up with a story idea. I grabbed my computer and ran with it, fleshing out only a few details here and there.

I relish in this part of the creative process. It's my favorite part--when an idea seizes you, whether a character, a name, a place or a feeling, and you can't do anything else until you scribble down what you know so that your brain can move on to figuring out the whys and whats and wheres of what you don't know.

This is how I write and it's exhilarating to me.

It's the sitting down and writing that's the hard part for me. Not every story seed that sprouts in my mind's garden develops into a full-blown tale. I'm learning (and failing) to be okay with this. In my writerly patch I want to nurture every idea that pushes itself to the surface and breaks through.

But I can't. Thinning out the story sprouts fighting for my attention is a normal part of the process. Because I have more ideas than I have time to write. While I don't ever fully "scrap" ideas that I jog down, I've had set them aside to never pick them back up, probably showing they weren't really viable in the first place.

Even as I write that last sentence, I'm reminded that often characters or plot bits of "thinned out" story ideas still manage to weave their way into the stories I decide to keep and focus on. So I guess in some way, the ideas I castoff do eventually find life, but in a way I didn't expect.

Today, though, I'm not thinning. I'm casting the story seeds far and wide, eager to see what takes root.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash