Is it a rule that people who strive for creativity must also suffer from minds that run in different directions and sometimes scramble like an egg?
"Suffer" is a strong word here. Having wisdom teeth removed is suffering. Reading badly constructed textbooks is suffering. A flippity-flop mind shouldn't always be categorized as suffering. After all, having a seventeen track mind can come in handy, especially when I'm writing a piece that deals with multiple points of view.
It's just-it can get so noisy in a head filled with thoughts, can it not?
There are always at least three different blog posts in my head at a time. This one has been bumping around for weeks. Ideas bump around like atoms. Sometimes they bump together and make something new. I suppose we could on with the metaphor, stating that when the creative juices are flowing, it's like when an object (your brain?) is in a solid state and the ideas are all jiggling around together, ready to mix and match and make something crazy.
Then you've got those moments of creative-lull...and the ideas...are spread apart...and there ain't nothing bumping into anything. Like steam, get it?
Just give me a couple of years to wrap my head around that one.
(Johnny doesn't work with solid-liquid-gas principalities the way we do, you'll have to excuse him.)
When I'm bouncing two or three blog post ideas around in my head, I like to play with them, in high hopes that they will end up colliding.
Here are two thoughts that ended up bumping into each other: "writing to make your dreams (literally) come true," and, "facing the facts: why are you a writer?"
Let's just plunge in with the latter:
I once heard a pastor say something in a youth group that my sister and I were visiting:
"Everything you do is based off of what you WANT."
Which, I realized, is completely true: either you're doing something because you WANT to, or because you DON'T want to. Tricky! It made me feel like no matter what I did, I would always be running on (in the core of it) selfish ambitions.
Which isn't a very pretty feeling. So, I do my best to fuel my writing ambitions with completely non-narcissistic backgrounds: not to be great but to inspire greatness. Offering light to the world instead of congesting it. Writing by listening, writing love, writing something that is conclusive, that reverses racism, humanism, misogyny, illiteracy, etc. etc. etc!
And then, on other days, my goal as a writer is this:
Write book.
Get rich.
Move to farmhouse.
Write more books.
Get dog.
Which, although a pretty thought, will not the writing of a good book make. Writing with selfish desires is like drinking eight cans of Red Bull instead of eight glasses of water. You fizzle-pop-die quickly, become depressed, want to give up-feel like you're a failure, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Now, writing to make your dreams come true:
What always makes my fingers tingle with excitement is this:
You can write anything. That page isn't empty-it's full of invisible possibility!
Once you learn how to grab hold of all those invisible possibilities on a daily basis (and once you do it more and more, your aim gets better and better), then you are allowed to occasionally indulge yourself in making your dreams (literally) come true via fiction.
For writers, this is a solution. We are the ones who live halfway in dreams, pinching in ingredients from "real life," and mixing them together until the batter is thick and yummy and you can't tell which is real and which is not. That's magic.
So, I could write books, and through said books, live in a farmhouse. Let's throw in a dog. And some chickens. And (if I'm feeling really clever), I'll be spreading light and love and inspiration into the world through a novel at the same time.
It's possible. My aim is getting better and better, as are my motives.
But let's skip step "Get Rich." I don't actually care about money. You could say I'm rich in other things, like words, words, beautiful words.
Write lovely, Lovelies!
"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze."
-Isaiah 43:2
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