Creativity is one of the driving forces in my life. It's something I've always treasured about myself and a part of me I have tried to nurture and grow throughout my life. But lately, I found myself frustrated with my creative side and it is something I want to get out of my system.
I love being a creative person. I enjoy experimenting with ideas and concepts. I wish I could expand my imagination into more avenues. Unfortunately for myself, I cannot draw to save my life and as my fashion sense exhibits, I am pretty inept with colours and visuals. I do love photography, but it is something I enjoy for fun, not something I want to chase as a career.
I've always considered myself a writer. That is the avenue down which I explore my imagination. Publishing a novel would be my dream come true and some days I see that as my future. Other days, I wallow in how hard it can be to get published. Still, even on my bad days, writing to me is a type of freedom I never want to live without.
Lately, I've been forcing myself to write everyday, whether inspired or not, just to keep the juices flowing. It's been great for content but not for structure. What I mean by that is, I've been dealing with one of the pitfalls of writing; too many ideas. Currently, I am working on polishing my novel to ready it for submission to agents and publishing companies. However, I am constantly being besieged by new ideas. Bits of a new story concept will flash into my mind or I'll finally figure out the perfect way to integrate a character into a different book idea. The new thoughts are endless and they interrupt the flow while I'm working on my current project. What do I do? Stopping to write down these new concepts takes me out of the zone but not writing them down drives me nuts if I later forget them. I can't be upset that I'm having all these ideas because that is one of the parts I love about being creative. I just wish I could find a way to tune out these thoughts when I want to focus on one story and get them back as soon as I'm done.
Another downfall about having an overactive imagination is that I can't always be creating. A lot of jobs with writing as the focus are highly competitive, hard to get into, or pay very little. The hard work and competition I am not afraid of. I am however, unable at this point in my life to reconcile the "pay very little" part. Writing for a living is my dream but how do I achieve that dream without sacrificing my other dreams; my dreams of having a nice home, or children, or no more school debt? I do not currently work in a field that allows for my creativity. It is much more structured. As much as I love my job and the people I work with and the fact that this job allows me to pay down debt and still have funds for fun, I still find myself sad at times that I'm not "bring home the bacon" through my writing. It is also infuriating to be at work in the middle of the day and feel absolutely inspired and know that you can't stop what you are doing to start writing.
I think this is part of the reason I started blogging again. I wanted a way to get the ideas that are swirling in my brain out but not to feel the pressure of having to get them perfect like I do with my story ideas. My blog is a place where I don't have to worry about the dreaded delete button. This is where I write free form. My posts tend to be the first things that pop into my head, very light on the editing. And that is okay. That's the point even. It is writing and composing and exploding my ideas on to the screen and not having to worry about if I got it right or if it flows perfectly or all makes exact sense. On here, I can explore emotions, rant about nothing and everything. I can post about whatever I want and all it means is that I am still getting to create something, however small it may be.
