Que Sera, Sera

My writing journey, leading up to this point in time, has been filled with a plethora of half imagined worlds and the delicately built characters that inhabit them; living their lives and forging their own paths within the chaos of incomplete ideas. I have notebooks dedicated solely to specific projects, purchased with the hopes of imbedding my mind deeply within their pages and creating whole new realities to lose myself in. A new year, a new month, sometimes even a new week, ushering in a new idea, a new setting, a new cast of characters, and thus, the requirement of a new notebook in which to capture the unraveling works of my mind and hopefully produce something tangible and worth sharing. Here is the fun part; every new notebook, every new idea, ends up stashed in a tote box, stored away until the next big inspiration hits and the inner workings of my mind take off once again. The dust never truly has a chance to settle. Because my constant revolving door of a mind cannot seem to focus long enough to see through the development and completion of a singular project, (I may have a hint of ADHD hidden somewhere in the recesses of my brain that I choose to deny the existence of), I cannot even seem to stick to a specific writing genre. A common element within most of the ideas tend to lead to horror, however, as I have never actually written a complete manuscript before, a lot of my writing varies and incorporates multiple genres into one chaotic, frankenstein-esque, combination.

Do I keep track of how many ideas and how many notebooks I have ongoing? No, of course not. Once every blue moon, I will haul out that tote box from the back of my closet and leaf through the pages of various moleskins, and hilroy notebooks, but truthfully, my brain keeps spinning and the box ends up back in the closet; sometimes with a new addition to the collection. I don't, however, consider this to be a failure on my end. Over the past decade, I have built myself a collection of possibilities; ideas that can easily be built upon and flushed out and turned into something amazing (given enough caffeine and inspiration).

So, how do I choose what to work on, given that there are so many options (and SO MANY NOTEBOOKS)? Well, to be entirely honest, a lot of my inspiration and ambition is tied heavily into the seasons. I'm sure you've heard of "seasonal depression". A large portion of the world's population undergo bouts of depressive behaviour during certain times of the year, which has been linked to the changing of the seasons. In a similar fashion, the storylines that peak my interest are heavily influenced by the current season. I find myself shifting from project ST which is a cozy mystery set within a small town during the autumnal months (think the smell of old books, asphalt darkened by rain, and streets lined with the yellow, orange tinge of fall, corn mazes and pumpkins on doorsteps), over to project AO, which is set at a military operating base in the Arctic (dark, desolate, cold and that constant chill sitting deep within your bones). I'm sure you can already guess from the above descriptions when I choose to switch to a different writing project.

Of course, because of this constant back and forth between projects, I find myself in a continuous cycle of preparing and developing these ideas, but then moving on, never passing the stage of fleshing out the idea and building a plot structure. Everytime I return to an idea, although I feel refreshed and inspired and filled with new possibilities for the storyline, this only serves to drag me back into the cycle of preparing and developing. Eventually, it would be ideal if I were to actually WRITE the damn story.

As much as I would like to blame the absence of any real story writing on my constant flip-flopping between projects and loss of inspiration due to seasonal changes, I honestly feel like there is more to it than that. I couldn't say for sure if I lack the confidence in my own abilities to properly convey these worlds on paper, or if I simply feel as if I don't have enough understanding of the craft of writing in order to do justice to the ideas swarming inside my mind.

At this point, I just have to take a leap of faith, choose a story and let it run loose onto an empty page.

Hanna B.