My filing cabinet drawers, artist journals and writer’s notebooks are
full of good intentions and great ideas, but very little to show for it. There
are lists of subjects, themes, issues, all of which could be central to a
storyline, no matter what the setting or century or real or imagined world.
There are copious files of story beginnings, opening lines, first paragraphs,
chapters one, two and maybe three if I was lucky, but where are the finished
products?
There are very few. Lots of poems, some good, many others rather
half-hearted or long winded, and a collection of completed short stories, some
of which have been submitted to competitions with no result. What happened to
the next Great Australian Novel I once dreamed of writing? It’s still a dream,
or maybe by this stage of my life, it’s really an illusion.
Self-doubt and conversely, self-belief, have a bearing on one’s
productivity, but when it comes down to it, a good idea is nothing more than
that unless it actually leads somewhere. No matter how many walks along the
beach or in the bush mulling over that possible plotline, design, piece of
choreography, painting or sculpture, song or musical composition etc etc, at
some point you just have to pick up the whatever and begin. What is in your
head has to come out and find its place in the real world.
No completed work ever came into being through simply dreaming. After the
dream comes the discipline. The planning, plotting, researching, rough drafting,
trial and error stage. Bursts of energy, lulls of disappointment, and all the
in betweens on the roller coaster ride that it takes to see something through. And
if we’re very fortunate, there are moments of enlightenment and encouragement along
the way when things start falling into place. What we come up with might not
look exactly like what we envisioned at the start, but the shape it is taking gives
us the impetus we need to continue. And continue we must.
Thought and ideas
flow from the tip of the pen
abstract to concrete
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