Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Ideas in the darkness and in the light of day


The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
— Agatha Christie

If Agatha Christie said this, then it is not so difficult for budding writers (like myself) to admit the same. I think of all the times when I’m doing housework, and ideas pop into my head, and I make a mental note to write them down before they just flit away into the vast cosmos. I wonder if there is a world somewhere—the world of lost ideas. I wonder if there is a way of entering that world, in order to retrieve some of the ideas that got away. Because they do slip away if you don’t catch them when they first appear. Many of them appear while doing mundane chores. But many of them come vividly to life in the darkness. How many times I lie awake at around 5am and ideas rush into my head, and I ponder each of them, turning them over and over in my mind. Can this work? Can I write about that? How will I develop this or that character? Should I do so? And so on. Some of the ideas don’t pass muster in the light of day. It’s odd what the early morning darkness will do for your creativity. Some of the ideas are wild, fantastical, and completely irrational—but they are exciting to think about because there is an element of dare and bravado to them; that can disappear in the waking light. My mind is somehow braver in the dark, and it is an aspect of me that I don’t understand. This can also be true for finding solutions to problems—personal or otherwise. I come up with such wonderful solutions in the dark—things I’m going to say (and mean), decisions that will be irrevocable--the new me with a tough no-nonsense attitude. I come up with quips and sarcastic retorts to rude people and can plan out my replies to those who like to talk over me when I try and speak. And then the dawn breaks and in the light of day I’m not so tough. I have to struggle to be brave and to remember my promises to myself made in the dark. And it is the same with writing. The ideas are there--hundreds of ideas. I don’t lack for ideas for what to write about. The problem is choosing the one idea I want to focus on. The ideas have probably been there for years, inside of me, waiting for an opening. Sitting down and actually writing about them releases them, expands them, solidifies them and makes them real. But in the darkness they all seem so viable. In the light, they are not. In fact, some of them can seem quite ridiculous.

I try to pay attention to my inner voice, the one that tells me what path is probably best to follow these days. My heart is in accord with this inner voice. So I have often experienced that my inner voice tells me to have several projects going at one time—I work a little on one of them during one week, and then suddenly the following week, my inner voice suggests that I focus on another project. I don’t know if it is like this for other writers. For example, I am currently working on a book of short stories and a science fiction novel, but the book that is ready to go at present is a book of reflections about workplaces and the work world that I’ve been mulling over for the last month or so. Most of the essays and reflections that make up the book were written during the past two years, but it is the actual compilation of these that took some time. How best to present them, which ones should come first--that sort of thing. It all fell into place, and once again I marvel at the creative process. I understand so little of it, but it is so exhilarating to experience. The freedom associated with it is like nothing I have ever experienced before, and once you taste that freedom, you will not trade it away for anything. 

The four important F's

My friend Cindy, who is a retired minister, sends me different spiritual and inspirational reflections as she comes across them and thinks I...