The Tyranny of Ideas
Damn if I have not lost my creativity over the years
This also seems like a repeating theme when I reboot my sites.
After I make notes about how many times I have rebooted, or talk about what kinds of changes I have made over the years, or just talk about interesting variations in a theme I have used over the years, I will inevitably make a post about coming up with ideas.
I seem to have two main problems with ideas at the moment:
1) Just coming up with interesting things is hard sometimes.
I know everyone has problems with ideas, but I really can not get in gear sometimes.
Some of it is just age, as I get older, I am slowing down.
Some of it is likely a byproduct of the various meds or medical conditions I have, these things do mess with your brain chemistry after all.
Of course, there is always the point that I was never all that creative anyway. I never claimed to be a font of unending ideas, but I did used to write a pithy thing or two every day in my 20s, and I do have an archive of short stories around here somewhere.
So I am blaming it on age and drugs...
2) When I do come up with ideas, I tend to work them over too much in my head.
This is the big killer for my posts. I will come up with some idea and mull it over in my head without writing it down anywhere. By the time I get to writing it down, I have worked it over so much that it no longer interests me or vexes me or pushes me, so I just do not have the juice to push it.
A prefect example of Point 2 is a short story idea I have been booting around about the creation of the universe. Every now and again I will think about it and work it in my head, so by the time I get a chance to write it out, I have burned it out again and the words just do not flow.
The worst part is that I kind of know what I need to do to help.
I need to immediately jot down ideas (I carry a notebook just for such work). And I need to practice writing every day. Writing every day helps even bad ideas get out of my head and exercises the part of my brain that needs to spit these things out. It also reinforces habits that will lead to me putting more ideas into words.
Maybe the idea of this wiki/blog thing will give me something to work with so I can work on good habits.
Unfortunately to anyone reading this, that means there is going to be lots of crap before anything gets decent. Not sure if that is a good thing or not. Time may tell.