jennifer_brozek (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jennifer_brozek) wrote2010-07-07 10:16 pm
jennifer_brozek) wrote2010-07-07 10:16 pm
Entry tags:
Refreshing the Well
After a couple of months of Go-Go-Go, I find myself at the pleasant place of not having an immediate, in-my-face deadline. This is a wonderful place to be for a short time. Especially with the Murder & Mayhem Tour coming up. It means I get time to do what I call "refreshing the well."
Authors and other artistic types all call it different things; that place you go to (or it intrudes on you) for inspiration to create the next great thing. I don't really visualize it as a well so much as a leaky pipe in the under the sink. Ideas spread across the floor of my mental bathroom in uncontrolled waves. Frequently, I have to stop, tighten a nut or patch a hole and focus on one thing until it is done. Then I go the next thing.
Occasionally, I just let the leaky pipe break and allow the ideas to flow all over my mental house wherever they will. I don't try to control them. I don't try to fix the pipe and I don't try to harness the ideas. I give my mental tools a break and let the ideas escape. I rest. I refresh my brain. I put down the tools and just experience things for a while. That is when I discover which escaped ideas are meant to come back to me. Which are the ones that really want to stay, play and to be born.
Sometimes…many times…these prodigal ideas return with friends in tow. "It followed me home, can we keep it?" These tagalongs don't always stick around but they do party for a while.
I'm at a point where I am only working on The Edge of Propinquity and Beauty Has Her Way. Sure, I have other things to work on. They are on my "To Do" list but right now, the idea of a little relaxing and a lot of reading sounds divine.
Authors and other artistic types all call it different things; that place you go to (or it intrudes on you) for inspiration to create the next great thing. I don't really visualize it as a well so much as a leaky pipe in the under the sink. Ideas spread across the floor of my mental bathroom in uncontrolled waves. Frequently, I have to stop, tighten a nut or patch a hole and focus on one thing until it is done. Then I go the next thing.
Occasionally, I just let the leaky pipe break and allow the ideas to flow all over my mental house wherever they will. I don't try to control them. I don't try to fix the pipe and I don't try to harness the ideas. I give my mental tools a break and let the ideas escape. I rest. I refresh my brain. I put down the tools and just experience things for a while. That is when I discover which escaped ideas are meant to come back to me. Which are the ones that really want to stay, play and to be born.
Sometimes…many times…these prodigal ideas return with friends in tow. "It followed me home, can we keep it?" These tagalongs don't always stick around but they do party for a while.
I'm at a point where I am only working on The Edge of Propinquity and Beauty Has Her Way. Sure, I have other things to work on. They are on my "To Do" list but right now, the idea of a little relaxing and a lot of reading sounds divine.