I did get my Mac back. It now has a new hard drive. And I have the arduous task of sticking all the stuff back on it. But I’ve been busy with a couple of writing projects, namely a novella proposal I was asked to be part of and getting one of my novels ready for the Genesis. And since the restore process is time consuming and doesn’t allow any other applications to be open while it’s running, I have to wait until I’m not working on something to start restoring. Sigh.
On another topic, I ran across this article by Neil Gaiman in my RWA eNotes. In it he talks about the question he gets asked the most: where do your ideas come from? It’s a great short discussion on the creative process and makes the point that ideas aren’t really what make a book. Something writers get but normals don’t.
Also I was gratified to see he had the same experience in his child’s classroom that I did in my daughter’s last year.
But then there was this awesome quote near the end of the article.
My idea of hell is a blank sheet of paper. Or a blank screen. And me, staring at it, unable to think of a single thing worth saying, a single character that people could believe in, a single story that hasn't been told before.
Staring at a blank sheet of paper.
Forever.
Reminds me of Mike Snyder’s post at the Master’s Artist last Thursday.
Which was kind of timely for me because for the novella project I was given a location, a date, and a character. That was it. And I had two weeks to come up with a synopsis and a first chapter. It was a new experience for me. And because I like to plan and plot before I write, it was pretty scary to just write. But I came to the same conclusion Gaiman did: the ideas are there and I don't have to worry about running out of them. That was pretty freeing.
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