Brain Dead, But Raring To Go

I left my office Friday night for the last time around 1 AM in the morning. I brought my project to a place where I could logically stop and my successor could easily step in. I packed up my personal belongings and come Monday morning, I'll be moving downstairs to my new spot in the company. It's a huge relief to be starting anew.

I had dinner with a friend a few weeks ago and we were talking about the writing process. She was fascinated by the "voices in your head". She was genuinely interested in the process that I go through to wrangle a story onto the page and it was fun talking about my writing experience. It's hard to explain exactly what it is like to have whole worlds bouncing around in your head populated by characters that have a voice in your head and a story to tell.

Most of my stories are born in dreams. I "wake up" in a story, playing a role in what is going on, and gather all the information I can before the alarm goes off. I have had some really vivid and incredible dreams.

Meanwhile, the characters and story lines continue to jostle about in my head trying to get my attention. UGH! And just when I felt I was getting the new ones under control an old one popped up and demanded a rewrite.

*taps fingers*

I need to get these pests in some sort of order.

I suppose it is better to have them lining up and waiting to be written instead of facing a blank page and having no ideas whatsoever.

Recently, an old story came vividly back into my dreams. It was originally written when I was in my teens. It has been sitting in storage in my office closet for years. But the other night, it returned with such vivid intensity, I woke up crying. I dragged the old manuscript out (I can still feel the bumps on the pages from my old typewriter keys) and looked it over. The story is solid. The writing is decent considering how young I was. The dialog is lacking, but I realized it was because I lacked the maturity to actually do justice to the topic. I sat on the floor in my office with my little dog at my side and read over some parts of it. I was a little embarrassed at first with the dialog, but then I realized it was written when I was 14-16. It deserves a rewrite. It's a solid story and the characters are actually well drawn out. I've added it to the pile of "Things Rhiannon Needs to Write".

It's a growing pile.

It's getting scary.

EEK!

I am getting some of the ideas fluttering around in my head into some sort of weird order. I'm writing down what I can on them so the idea will settle down until I can tackle them. Easier said than done at times, but its helping me get focused.

I thought I knew which novel I was going to write next. Now I'm not sure. BAH!

Oh, well. *sigh*

Stupid Muse. She's trying to make my head explode.