Imagination Creation
Sometime I get overwhelmed with my own imagination. New story ideas are always popping into my head; plot ideas, characters, or even just titles. They’re fun to run with, but for a long time, I felt guilty.
Ideas were dangerous. Not the ideas themselves, but to focus on them instead of the story I was specifically writing was dangerous. I’d been warned. Those insidious little beasts would tunnel into my brain and draw my attention away from the hard work of writing. Of course it was easier to brainstorm new ideas than to flesh out old ones into comprehensible stories.
I tried to rid myself of them by jotting my ideas into various notebooks. I was drowning in half-started journals.
Guilt followed me. How could I finish one story if I’d already jumped ahead to the next? And with more than a dozen journals already, how could I possibly have time to turn them all into their own story?
The answers struck me out of the blue. I don’t have to turn each one into its own book! I can just enjoy the process of brainstorming! And what about the very real danger of distraction? That, I realized, was entirely in my control. All I had to do was set aside some fun brainstorming time in my writing schedule. If I plan it, the tsunami of ideas will get their time to shine without drowning my work-in-progress.
Now I’m even more excited to romp around in my imagination.