My (Current) Creative Process

Sometimes this happens over weeks, sometimes days, and in the worst times, over one weekend. When you ride the creative waves of inspiration, sometimes they are elusive and other times they sweep you up and carry you with them. So when the waves stop, and you are stranded in an unknown sea, and the direction is unclear, it’s a good time to evaluate your faith in yourself.

For the moment, my process seems to be pretty consistent. Shared with intended humor, though it's still true, this is how each story is born:

• So, I have this idea…
• I think my idea is pretty good.
• This is a pretty good story.
• This is going awesome!
• Huh.
• This is tricky.
• I can’t figure it out.
• Fucking-a.
• (This is where I try to distract my brain with stupid logic puzzle games.)
• Okay. I need to babble at you about a story you don’t know anything about. But please don’t ask me any questions yet or you’ll derail my train of thought.  I just need you to let me babble.
• I hit a wall and it’s a thick wall.
• I’m going to moan about it and say I need to take a break but I’m not going to take a break. Instead I’m going to work on this one sentence for the next 5 hours.
• This is crap. THIS SUCKS! I don’t even remember where it was going!
• I’m going to ask you what you think, but everything you say will be wrong. Sorry in advance.
• I don’t want to hear you say that I’m a good writer and I can do this. Stop encouraging my failure!
• I suck. This was a horrible idea. Everything I write is lame. What was I thinking?!
• The universe is lame. I can’t write. I can’t be a writer.  I want to die.
• I should just work at Crawl-mart…
• …but I can’t imagine doing anything other than writing.
• (Deep breaths.)
• I just need you to tell me I’m a good writer. Tell me I can do this.
• I need to look at my story with new eyes.
• Okay, a lot of it doesn’t suck.
• OH! OMG! I figured it out!
• (Insert usual unhappiness that I had to cut something/someone I cared about to make it work. At least I accept it as part of the journey. Fighting it only insures a broken story.)
• That was so easy to fix.
• I think this is a good story.
• I wrote a really good story.
• Writing is awesome.