Having an unfinished work is not the end of the world! Being distracted or overtaken by life which stopped you from finishing a work is a not a cause for alarm! It happens!
The toughest part will ways this, “Can I pick up where I left off?”
Which really translates to “Do I/Can I have the focus to write this?”
With refocusing your energy, you can.
With idenifying what you need to support your writing, you can.
If you make time to write a little a time, you can.
It is okay if you take today–if only today–and recharge. Creativity is a battery. It does have its low points, and operates best at when it is at full change.
The blank pages, the new pens, and the cache of anxious notebooks. Seduce and subdue the sires with sweat, passion and ink. Pay for your talent with ink.
Imagination will always be the collateral.
Talent will be the financing that gets drafts completed.
Hopes and wishes do not fill pages, Oracles. Wishes are what we write down in order to fulfill them. Writing is equal parts talent and decision. Put both of those together today, right now and fill pages.
The only thing that determines that what you need to create is your pen.
There is a boldness that comes when you decide that time is not going to determine how and when you create! As a writer, you must determine and design how you negotiate the time to write versus the need to write.
This week will make a reference to The Writers’ Block Podcast: the episode name is “The Power Of The Draft Drawer.”
There is a magic to revisiting what you have created. There are some of us whom do this work, practice this craft, know that not everything can be written, and not everything can be seen either. But you have to know that what you have on you head–it will eventually find its way out of it.
There is this concept of a draft-drawer I heard Anne Rice speak about during one of her Facebook Live sessions. She said that she doesn’t toss work away–she saves it! She saves it because it may be needed for something else.
It may be backstory for something else; the original idea can be reworked (Christopher Rice said he remembered the novel we know as The Witching Hour being a totally different permutation before the finished work); the work can be used to be a subplot–but nothing needs to be thrown away! The map to the work you need to write–is in your hands.
The drafts are maps! No good explorer or adventurer throws away their map! Writing is one of those careers where mapping, where recording is one of the ways by which the work is completed. And the work must be completed!
Do not be afraid of the work ahead, Oracles. Do not be afraid of what you must do, must get out of you, and what you are excited about! Writing is hard enough! There are some work you will do which will require a map–don’t sell yourself short.
I love a good brainstorm! This is when all your creative energies surface together and crash into your imagination. It allows you to test your imagination’s limits–and stretch it in ways you had not thought about before.
A brainstorm is a writer’s best friend.
With any storm, they seem to come out of nowhere, and are more powerful than thought. You must remember that you wield the wind and rains which come in these storms. They should never overwhelm you, startle you or through you off balance!
Brainstorming is different from “The Flow” because the source is different. Brainstorming is internal while “The Flow” is external. Brainstorms come out of the blue, while “The Flow” has to be experienced, tapped into even. It’s a current more, while a brainstorm is a circuit. Embrace that and channel it.
