End of the Tunnel, but the Trip Ain't Over Yet

After several weeks of carving out a few hours a few days a week of completely uninterrupted writing time, I have finally fleshed out the entire rough outline for this next feature. I'm calling it, "How to Eat Pho" for now. Although Pho has little to do with the meat of the story.

I find one of the difficult parts of creating when one doesn't have a lot of time to do it during a normal day is making the energy shift from task oriented adult thinking to more relaxed, playful and open thinking, more akin to the way a child might be in a sandbox full of toys. It's nearly impossible for me to stop the breaks on the former and move immediately into the later. Yeah, it sucks, but who said being a grown up is much fun?

I remember reading that Alejandro Jodorowsky required rituals for his creative process. So I created one. For me, sitting totally still for about ten to fifteen minutes, then stretching and inviting creative energy into my space worked quite well. I also turned off my phone. I had several different colored note cards and colored pens. Lots of tape and scissors. Music good for thinking. Cats.

With all of this around me, and making a ritual transitioning from the normal energy of the day to that amazing creative explorative space became quite easy. I found all sorts of new and unusual little nuances in the direction of this story. Life size puppets. Time traveling whores. Speedos and clove cigarettes and apparitions from people still alive. Lots of things opened and I was able to get past an area in my initial idea that was a huge block.

So, the twenty page synopsis is done. This is a small feat, but now I must go back and shape and refine and start asking questions of all these little visions and ideas that popped up. This is the harder part, in some ways, because it requires making a lot of tough decisions, or sitting back down and exploring an alternative for the same story concept.

So...onward ho....