Projects

So, anyway, as I say, and as I hope I'm demonstrating, ideas are easy to get. Those headlines I posted a few minutes ago just cry out "Hi, I'm a story!" - about the poor macaque raiding garbage and trying to survive the winter (where did he come from? How did he get there? Can he have a happy ending?), about Bigfoot hunting deer, or maybe a comedy of errors as human deerhunters are mistaken for Bigfoot. But how would you write these stories? Are they picture books? Mid-grade novels? Young adult? Graphic novel? Maybe a film? Mystery? Thriller? Nature? Horror? Tragedy? Comedy? What audience would you write the story for?

These are the kinds of questions that turn an idea into a project; and the project part is where most people fall down. "Oh, I wish I had time," people say; not realizing that the problem is not time but energy and desire. You put your energy where your desire is.

Yes, yes, you have a living to make, school to go to, kids to raise, a house to clean. But how much time do you really spend on those things? Isn't a lot of your day taken up with cruising the net, reading for fun, playing video games, and watching TV? Which is fine. But if you want to do something, you do it.

That's a little facile. I have had to face the fact that I want to do more things than I can physically do. But all the same, I can do a lot of things, even when I feel lousy. I always have a line-up of projects I want to do. This week's project is this blog, figuring out how it works, posting, all that. Plus I have a house guest part of the week. Plus I do the cooking and most of the cleaning; but I can't let that interfere with researching my next book project, and I really need to learn how to sew slacks because ready-to-wear ones never, ever fit right. (They pull down in the back. No one wants to see that! And it's cold.) So how do I make sure it all gets done?

For one thing, I know when to stop blogging about stuff, and go do it! I'll talk about this more next Thursday, God willing and the creek don't rise.