The Chocolate Factory

By Elaine Klonicki, www.TheAuthenticLane.com

I don’t know a single writer who doesn’t have a lot of ideas. It’s one of the reasons I love hanging out with people in Triangle Association of Freelancers—there’s never any shortage of topics to discuss. Having such diverse interests, we learn all kinds of weird and kooky facts from each other.

Although each of us has a particular focus or two for our own writing, we’re generally curious people, open to learning about our writing buddies’ fascinations. We understand our own need to go down the rabbit hole until our curiosities have been satisfied, so we support each other’s compulsion to do so. We like to think of ourselves as friendly nerds.

At our meetings we’ve talked about how creative ideas hit us at the most inopportune times: while we’re in the shower or out walking, driving, or especially, while we’re trying to fall asleep at night. Each of us has our own method for capturing our ideas, whether it’s keeping a notepad on our nightstands, recording a message to ourselves on our phones, or running to the computer as quick as we can, even if it’s with a towel draped around us.

(I got the idea for this post today while washing dishes, and had to quickly dry my hands and jump on it before it left me.)

In her book on creativity Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert shares her belief that ideas are out there floating in the ether, and they choose us to land on. They nudge us for a period of time, but if we don’t respond, they get tired, and move on to someone else. I don’t know how true the latter part is—although it’s kind of fun to think about—but I definitely know about the nudges.

Sometimes we’re in a mental space where we act right away when creativity strikes, and we write, submit, and get an acceptance within a short period of time. Don’t we love when those high-action periods hit us and we’re producing and submitting one article (or in some cases, one book) after another? But then life happens, and there are times when we’re either too stressed or demoralized or unfocused to work on our writing.

For me, even when I’m in a temporary state of pause, the ideas still come, so I have a practice of opening a Word file, giving it a quick title, and writing just enough so that I don’t lose the concept. I store it in a folder called “Article Ideas for Submission.”

On occasion, usually when I’m searching for something else on my computer, I’ll come across that folder, and I’ll feel badly that I haven’t acted on the article stubs. I can’t figure out why I have left so many pieces in that unfinished state, and get mad at myself for wasting my talent.

A few years ago, I decided to start a personal growth blog, but then life got in the way. Still, post ideas kept coming to me, so I filed them away, one by one, in a blog folder. Eventually I developed my own blog site using Squarespace (with the help of a friend in TAF). After writing a few introductory posts, I turned to my idea folder, and found nearly 50 topics stored there. It was like Christmas!

A friend from book club, who’s not a writer, asked me what would happen if I couldn’t come up with a topic for a given week. I think she was surprised at my confused look, followed by my firm assertion that there’s no way that would happen. She probably doesn’t know that writers don’t have a shut-off valve for our ideas. If we did, we’d use it at night so we could get some sleep, right?

When I’m asked about the update to my psychotherapy book, or my screenplay adaptation of my self-published WWII love story, I cringe inwardly. Every writer knows the guilt and shame related to having unfinished projects. But today after an energetic day where I wrote several posts, I decided there’s another way to look at them.

Freelancers are familiar with the “feast or famine” concept as it applies to income, but I think it also aptly describes our relationship to our own productivity. There are times of near-manic-level writing and times of dormancy. Few can sustain the energy and focus it takes to complete each idea as it comes to us. Today I’m choosing to see all those unfinished pieces and projects as “potentials” rather than “failures.” Each file in my ideas folder is like a long-lost present, waiting to be re-opened when I’m ready.

I know many of you have your own starter ideas and drafts in random folders on your computers, so I’m sure you can relate. Trying to finish them all reminds me of this hilarious clip of Lucy and Ethel working on the line in the chocolate factory. The candies just keep coming, so they start stuffing them in their pockets, down their dresses, in their hats, and in their mouths.

As writers, it’s an impossible task to be able to flesh out every idea that comes to us right away, given how many we have per day. But if we take a few minutes to capture a stub of them at the time they land on us (before they move on to someone else?), they will be there for the opening whenever we’re ready to revisit them. Even if someone else writes something similar in the meantime, our take will always be unique.

What’s in your unfinished folder that’s nagging at you today?

Elaine Klonicki is a freelance writer and certified copy editor. She has been published in The News & Observer, Military Officer magazine, Boys’ Life, Midtown magazine, and WAKE Living magazine. The author of All on Account of You: A True WWII Love Story, Elaine blogs about positive psychology and personal growth at www.TheAuthenticLane.com