when the muse comes calling

creativity is a bit of a harsh mistress. on the one hand you have to work hard at it, and treat it like a job. set aside some time to do the work you want to do. with luck each time you do this it should get easier. routine, oddly, allowing for freedom of expression. there are other times when the muse will strike. the muse being what she these may not happen at convenient moments for you. however make sure you are in a position to write notes about the idea so that you can return to it as soon as you can. by soon i mean as close to immediately as possible. why? there is a fne line between letting an idea stew and letting it go cold. the other day i had an interesting idea for a story. i quite liked the concept, it gave me a lot to play with. i had the opening and a feeling for the tone of the story. i just didn't know what i was going to do with it. so i thought i would let it rattle around for a bit while i thought of an ending. the excitement i felt for it has been lost. that isn't to say i am not going to go back to it, just that now it will be a totally different beast. today i thought about trying to do an abstract series around 'the stations of the cross'. this isn't a new idea barnett newman has already done a jaw droppingly simple and beautiful sequence of abstract paintings on the subject. i know now i want the sequence to start and end, it is the middle bits i am not sure about. i will sleep on it - and see if inspiration comes to me. if it doesn't then it will be a case of slogging through a number of ideas to see if any of them work and if any of them stick. there is a caveat to all of this - there are times when you are just going to have let an idea go. you have to know when it isn't going to work. don't worry though the effort won't have been wasted as even failed ideas will feed into something else you do at a later date.