Bursts of Creativity

They happen on the good days, good periods of time when our muses are free and our fingers eagerly tap on the keyboard to capture it all. Bursts of creativity. I imagine that the average non-writer imagines that these are quite common with us writers, us creative people.Of course, life writing isn't always that easy and can be incredibly frustrating.

I've been in a good patch for a long time now. I've been generating a lot of ideas both in my prose and poetry pieces, leaving me scrambling to write them all down. I haven't been stuck for a while, which always leaves me running to come back to it. I almost feel that this means I'll hit a dry spell soon so I'm trying to suck all this up while I can.

In the good writing life, I can write and write and write without being interrupted. If one idea isn't working out, I can jump to my next piece. This means that I can fulfill my writing deadline for the day (at least two pages on Word) fairly well. Bursts of creativity leave me eager to come back and thirsting for words more than I usually do.

Of course, even the good writing life- life in this creative stage- can have its downsides. It often means a great increase of ideas, ideas that I am not always equipped to handle (such as greatly involved ones or ones that involve a great deal of research). In addition, it can also mean that I cannot possibly write so many of them at once, leaving me to prioritize. I also have to go days at a time without even touching one. As ridiculous as it sounds, all this can also cause a great deal of stress.

That sounds ridiculous, stress. On top of trying to perfect a story and worry about its details, I have to do this for a couple of stories. While I enjoy doing this, it also leaves me worrying about them and whether I did a good job with it.

To demonstrate to the reader exactly what these bursts entail, below is a list of my writing history. The following are my writing projects, not including the ones I still plan to write. Keep in mind that the novels take precedence over the short stories but that I work avidly on both nonetheless:
1) The Face Behind the Mirror. I've been working on this since seventh grade and it's about to hit the six-hundred pages mark and end soon. There's a lot of rough edges to work out.
2) The Freedom Wars- Relatively new but I've been making somewhat good progress. I'm just getting over a rough patch with this. In the process of the bursts of creativity, this story has often been abandoned because of these very rough patches.
3) Standing in Hailstorms- I'm still in the beginning with this one but it's making good progress. I wrote this before I meant to because I just felt like I would burst with all of my ideas inside of me.
4) Untitled fantasy novel- I picked this up after ditching it in seventh grade. My major issue was delving into the mind of a male adolescent but I think I can fix that now.
5) Untitled short story- I'm at a bit of a rough patch because I don't know what to do with this one to bridge the beginning to the end. It's basically about a college student's descent into this world of angels and demons, which is brought full-circle at the end. Inspired by watching the terrible movie "The Beaver" (I wanted to make something better).
6) Untitled short story 2- I decided to make a mental illness series after my friend reviewed my story about a girl about to go off to rehab to deal with her anorexia. It's about a husband who is dealing with the fact that his wife has Dissociative Identity Disorder, which she developed after repeated sexual abuse as a child.
7) Miscellaneous blog posts here. Pretty much self-explanatory.
In addition, I also have a numerous amount of ideas that are in the waiting list but fortunately these happen to be short stories.

I'm attributing this flow of ideas to my new perspective on the world lately. When I am able to read more things and see thing, I can analyze them and it can get me thinking. For example, a combination of an article I read in Huffington Post that popped up on my AOL screen and my trip to New York City yesterday, I am inspired to write a short story about a homeless lesbian teenager named Andi who was kicked out of her home upon discovery. That's only one of the many examples I've had for inspirations.

 I'm also contributing the easiness I've had with writing to many of these stories being in their beginning stages. The beginning stage of a story, of course, is the honeymoon period where stories come easily and you only want to focus on them. When the story progresses and things get harder, the original lust fades into a more solid dedication. Sometimes, when the lust fades, the story crumbles and I am forced to move on. Making a story is kind of like making a marriage, I guess.

Being as I do have quite a deal of time off this week, I'm hoping that I will be able to have quite a bit of time to write. This has come at a good time for me, being as I will probably need something to entertain me for the week.

Now dear reader, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my works. As you can see, I have quite a deal to catch up on.

Ah, bursts of creativity. Like all the things in my life, they certainly keep me busy.