Solving The Riddle Of Creative Output

I don't think I'm inside my own mind today... I sit at this computer with an anticipation inside of me that I cannot yield. I want to create, I want to write but then there comes the all too familiar stifle. Where do I start? What do I write about? Do I write something new? Do I continue something I've already started? Do I work on something I've already written and make it better? It seems that, no matter how pure my intention, even with my hobby I cannot seem to find that glowing path (not unlike in a video game...) that will lead me where I need to go. Obviously, that's because there is no path. I'm just saying, it'd be nice.

Kind of like this time I called my grade 12 English teacher a "stupid bitch" (Maybe just out of spite, trust me when I say she deserved it, but I just hated her.) for chastising my lack of effort on an assignment. The criteria was far too vague (so far so as to say that it wasn't really criteria for anything at all...) to warrant any effort on my part. The creative muse isn't always a willing participant in the creative union, just like how my teacher was not a willing participant in that educational endeavor. However, with creativity there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, sometimes you've just got to dig around the tunnel a little bit to find it.

A lot of my more creative friends often tell me, when they're not up to it, that they 'cant figure out what to write'. They want to, they just don't know what to do. Well writing doesn't work like that. There's not always a stalwart force to direct you where you need to go. Sometimes, you have to be that stalwart force and today I do not feel like a force for anything, much less a immovable force. The muse is only as good as you nurture it to be, like a child or a plant. You have to feed it for it to grow. (Not literally, I mean I've just been reading a lot more lately) I haven't been feeding my muse as much as it needs, but as of late it's been getting far more nutrients than it has been prone to receiving over say, the past 16 months. As such, my muse has practically been in full gear.

Ideas have assaulted my mind on a daily basis, some good, others not so much, but always intriguing and motivating. I find myself constantly in this position that when I am at work, or otherwise indisposed, I'd love to be writing and diving into a world of imaginative bliss. But when I'm at home, free to do as my whims would heed I feel as if I need to sit down in front of my Xbox and embrace a healthy session of Madden 10. Madden, as lovely as it is, does not fuel my muse other than to make me ponder if I want to switch up teams in my Franchise Mode... I just read Maddox's The Alphabet of Manliness. Which was a great read, it's fueled my muse to blog but I must constantly remind myself that I am, in fact, not Maddox, so I shouldn't try to write like him when I'm blogging, no matter how fun it might be.

Creative types are, dare I say, enigmatic people. Driven by passion and reason, their only solace comes in the output of something from the heart. Be it something as small as a haiku, or as grand as a thousand page novel. A painting of a hummingbird or a mural of a world war two battlefield. Today I watched a trailer for the upcoming movie Cup of Tears, a very bad ass looking Modern/Sci-Fi Samurai movie, with violence, hyper stylization and even room for Ninjas too. This kickstarted my desire to write something with a Samurai. I wouldn't always recommend trying to exersize your muse by watching something but this was the one rare example that it did in fact work.

I've been reading a fair number of comics lately and that's tempted me to write in my own worldsetting. I don't really write for the purpose of getting published, that's my goal, but I'm still trying to find myself as a writer. I've got my own characters and sociology that mirrors our own. I've been torn on weither I should push the world forward, or if I should go back to stories past that I've since abandoned and re-work and finish them.

When I started out I had this fear of not finishing a story. I had tried to write a few stories and I couldn't finish anything, so when I finally started my first complete story titled "Superhero Anarchy" I made a goal for myself. No matter what, I would finish that story, and I did. Sounds easy but it wasn't. I almost failed the 11th grade writing that story and if it wasn't for an english teacher who knew I had more potential than the C-, 51 percent passing grade he gave me (That's right, I passed by 1 percent...) then I would've been in high school an extra year and odds are, I probably would've dropped out and dissapointed the shit out of my parents. Thank christ that never happened.

I got distracted by habitual smoking of marijuana (as fun as it is, when you're smoking a lot of it the only thing you're good for is sitting on the couch and eating all of your food. It can help the creative process but that's another story.) and that really thwarted my created efforts. Stories became too overambitious, I was stretching my efforts thin and in writing this I've come to realize maybe I need to simplify the process to achieve what I want to. So I'm still kind of back to where I started, do I go back to what I abandoned or do I leave it in the past and start on something new?

That debate will probably never get old. I think in the mean time I will just try something new and see how it goes. Trying anything will yield results and that's my main point. When in doubt, just do. You never know what you'll discover. Half of the act of telling the story occurs while writing it, you might take the story in a direction you never thought it would go. Some surprising, intriguing direction that you'll run with. Kind of like a blog entry, many times I've started an entry on nothing but a firecracker under my ass and rage in my heart only to find the answers to my questions yielded different questions than the ones I initially had in the first place.

Until next time I feel like something needs to be said, be it good, or bad.

PEACE