Organization vs Chaos: Creative Minds Unite

It is good to be different. It makes us each unique and stand out from the crowd.

I knew that my brain was like a swirling mass of thoughts, ideas, and never complete to-do lists, but never have I had the chance to "see" how my brains sorts and categorizes things so visually.

Until yesterday.

For 4 solid hours my dear pal and incredibly talented children's book writer and artisan, Christina Janz and I crafted buttons onto my soon to be stale-dated book marks for my book launch this Thursday.

(Yes. I am Scottish to the core and the thought of wasting those book marks was driving me squirrely.)

What a genius idea!

And like all my great ideas, it came to me at 2 a.m. a few weeks ago.

Button those suckers up, just like the book cover, I thought. 

Genius! Unique! One of a kind! 

Then my old pallie Monsieur Procrastination moved into our spare bedroom and stayed until mid day Sunday, when I packed his briefcase and released him into the Park out front.

This is when the reality of my sewing ability came crashing head on into my grandiose Buttoned Book Mark plan. 

9 down, only 91 to go. Captain, we have a problem...

One hour in, and 9 book marks later, I knew I had a problem, so I did what all self respecting authors do, I posted my troubles on Facebook, looking for a laugh and hoping for insights on how to increase my production time. 

What I didn't expect was an offer of help!

Best Invention Ever.

And thank goodness for Christina and her natural artistic talent and her deft use of a needle! And to boot, she introduced me to this fantastic little gizmo that threads your needle for you! What a gift for a 45 year old who is one prescription away from purchasing progressive glasses!

Once we had completed our sweat shop fun crafting morning, I noticed something peculiar as I began counting bookmarks. I started with Christina's pile, and blazed through her beautifully fanned out collection. Then I looked at my share. It was a tad bit more difficult to count as it appeared my side of the table been hit by a wind storm. Needles, button bags, and bent paper clips littered my chaotic pile.

"Look!" I said. "This is the perfect visual of our minds. Your bookmarks are a picture of organization, mine are a frenetic chaotic minefield!" 

Or something to that effect.

Yet, both of us are creative souls with imaginations we feed with writing, reading, and long hours spent day-dreaming up new worlds filled with "what-if" scenarios.

Three cheers for differences! 

And organization! 

And of course to chaos, who runs my creative mind! 

Writer's Block Fix!

Sometimes writing feels like careening blindly down the road to hell. 

And it's not like it's a quick trip, nor is it always obvious you are on the Highway to Hell. 

Nope, you may actually believe you are on the Candy Land Freeway, but then something happens and suddenly those bright jewel-tone jujube hedges that whip by as you zip along, don't look so tasty. In fact they seem to have melted into black pools of gummy goo, sort of like your thought process. You plod along for a while, stall out a few times as your words become more elusive and harder to pin down. Finally you come to a dead stop when your red licorice expressway decays into a fiery stretch of hot lava.

Your imagination is tapped. The writing has ceased. 

As the Soup Nazi would say - No Words for You! 

This process is repetitive, which is hellish in its own way and makes you wonder about the sanity of writers. Why bother to continue? Simple answer; we'd feel crazier if we stopped.

Sometimes I return after a brief lull in creative creation, with heady anticipation. My characters eager for further adventures, my plot bubbling, as excitement drips from my fingers onto my key board. Ew. That sounds sort of gross and my drippy fingers may be more the result of a broken air conditioner and wackadoo hormones, but I digress. What I was trying to say is my typing skills are maxed to keep pace with the seemingly endless perfect words that explode from my imagination. Trust me. This happens and it is sublime. (Love that word. It is so sublimely sublime.)

Other times, like right this very instant, my words hide from me, just out of reach. I've been nearly wordless for the entire summer, peeps. Writer's Block to the extreme. But I have a plan. This weekend I am off with my writing group, The Anitas, on our annual retreat to Grindstone Provincial Park at Christina Janz' cottage. It has been the solution to my past writing woes, so I am certain  hoping it will be the fix to my current predicament.

How can I be so sure?

There will be zero distractions; no kids, Internet, phone, laundry, wall scrubbing or window washing for me. Stop laughing. There was this one time I washed some windows.  My point is I will be hyper-focused, obsessed even, with stalking those verbs, nouns, prepositions, and conjunctions from their cozy hidey-hole in the back corner of my brain. (I can sense they are chilling out right behind the grey matter that controls my constant cravings for chocolate.)

Crap. Now all I can think about is brownies. And Hershey Kisses. Wait, what if there was a Hershey Kiss brownie? Must Google...

Sweet Mama! There is an entire Hershey Kisses site!

Hershey Kisses Recipes

What was I blogging about? Right. Writing distractions. 

I do believe I have made my point.