Not on my schedule, but fine anyway
I’ve spoken here before about how I don’t understand the murky operations of my creative self, and I’m happy not understanding. Great ideas pop into my head when I least expect them (though they seem to come most often when I’m mowing the lawn). I fear that if I knew what the process was, if I analyzed it and dissected it, I would slay it. So I take what it gives and smile inwardly with gratitude.
Nonetheless, my creative schedule sure seems to be capricious. I have perhaps half a dozen story/novel ideas I’m actively working on at present. (And by “actively” I mean they are at the front of my mind, not that I am drafting them or such.) I probably have that many more snippets of ideas floating around, and I have pages and pages of space in my paper journal waiting for things to be added. And I never know which of them is going to be graced by my mysterious creative self with a revelation.
Among my Google Documents are the notes I’m keeping for a short story that involves, among other things, circles. I was busy minding my own business the other day when I had this sudden understanding of another circle that is involved in the theme of that story. I opened the Google Documents file and added my quick notes, and then I started thinking of the further implications of this revelation, so the notes kept coming. I think I spent twenty minutes typing and cogitating and developing. It was satisfying and productive.
And then it stopped. I’m sure I’ll have other revelations like that one for this story idea, but in the meantime I expect to receive other great ideas on who-knows-what story idea. I sure don’t know, and as I said, I don’t want to know. But it sure is curious to me how various the schedule of my creative mind seems to be.
