A writer’s life is often an amalgamation of story lines, plot development and characterizations mixed with hours of anguish, self doubt and solitude.
It is hours and days, weeks, months and years of crafting words into palatable sentences. It is a lifetime of observation, years spent reading everything you can get your hands on and hours of solitude, drinking mass amounts of coffee or other more lively spirits in order to stay awake and keep the creative buzz going.
In my own little writing corner, my life is much the same, but there is one thing I’m dealing with, and though I believe a lot of other writers experience it as well we, for some strange reason, don’t talk about it a lot.
There have been far too many times where I have a great idea for a story, but then I realize if I stop to focus on it the work I’m currently writing begins to suffer.
So what do I do? I make a promise to jot the idea down in my journal and come back to it when I have time. I fool myself into believing that I’ll have time to visit the idea sometime next week or the week after that, but I never do.
And as I live the life of a writer, experiencing all the maladies of my choice, I know deep in my heart that most of my best work is something I haven’t written yet. It will be my next work, my next set of words and paragraphs and I know I must understand and embrace the fact and keep writing until my hands fall off or my current keyboard gives up the ghost whichever comes first.
I will write stories filled with pathos and humor, or suspenseful what-if scenarios that when properly fleshed out will be awesome (in my humble opinion) to read. And when I finish one I will write the next one, and the next one and the next one.
I have so many stories filling the pages of my journals and unless I write them, unless I start paying attention to them they will become the greatest story I never wrote, and their spirits will haunt me.
For now they remain locked within the borders of my notebook, begging for a chance to shine.
Maybe I’ll visit them next week or maybe the week after. After all I have this novel to finish.