Divide and Write

There are days when you would happily give up sex for a year in exchange for one good story idea.

And then there are days like this week where you are swarmed with ideas. There are so many possible stories and each one comes to mind faster than the previous one till you start thinking you might need to skip a meal to work in all of the writing and while you are at it, maybe skipping work, friends and sleep would be good too.

The biggest problem in times like these is that you are having so many ideas that you’re not actually writing any of them. The euphoric rush of creativity sometimes fucks your focus to the point that you’re not giving any one idea the time it needs to bloom into a story. You’re filling notebooks with ideas but readers don’t want ideas. They want stories and stories take time and focus.

Which is why I feel the best attribute a writer can develop is the ability to procrastinate when it comes to ideas. That brilliant thought you just had will still be as brilliant next month when you’re finished with what you are doing. Put it off. Write it down on it’s own separate page of notes and turn the page. Divide out your ideas into little cells in your notebook prison. Lock them away and keep them in isolation. Quit thinking about your ingenious BDSM story involving peppermint so that your current brilliant idea, the story about sadistic kinky real estate agents can get the attention it needs to get finished.

Divide and write.