What to Write When You Want to Write Everything
Let’s talk writing magic.
One of the things that comes up over and over and over in my 1:1 work, my group classes, and my own writing is this:
“I have so many ideas! I don’t know which one to pick.”
Or
“I have so many ideas. I have notebooks full of ideas and I never follow through with any of them.”
Do either of those sound familiar to you?
No?
Keep an eye out for my post: What to Write When You Don’t Know What to Write!
Yes?
Let’s talk writing magic.
One of the things I tell my clients is: stop making the ideas and the writing the same thing. Not every idea is SUPPOSED to be a story or a class or a novel or a piece of art. Not every idea needs to become something that you have TO DO.
And here’s where I get a bit woo -
Ideas, to me, feel like wisps of possibility. I feel like they come looking for the right human to write or create or at least bring them into this world.
One of my favourite stories about this is by Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic. She talks about having an idea for a book about a middle-aged woman who goes to the Amazon. She followed that idea for awhile - even started the research - but she didn’t start writing it. She then talks of meeting the author Ann Patchett, kissing her cheek, and spending some time visiting. Liz went home and started working on something else. Ann Patchett’s next book was about a middle aged woman who goes to the Amazon. Different book, same wisp of an idea.
Was the wisp passed with the kiss? I hope so.
My husband rolls his eyes each time he sees something he thought of months or years before suddenly for sale. He jokes about needing a tinfoil helmet to keep his ideas to himself.
But maybe, just maybe, those ideas just needed him to bring them into this realm of possibility. Maybe they needed his creativity and imagination to make them possible so that someone else could make them real.
So number one: don’t claim all of those ideas for yourself. Let yourself be the imagination and the creativity and the open portal for possibility that those ideas need to come to earth.
The second thing I say is: choose one to play with, and commit to that idea.
I know, that sounds like I am telling you to bring me the moon on a stick, but the one thing that I know for sure is that showing up for something until it’s done has a magic and a sense of the miraculous that can’t be matched by jumping around. Magic loves momentum. Magic loves devotion. Choose and show up and the magic will too.
Finish something.
And while you are finishing something, keep your idea notebook handy and let them come. Let them flow. They WILL flow because ideas and imagination respond to creativity; they are drawn to active creation and the perfume of the possible. The more you use it, the more you will find yourself filled with new ideas.
They are coming to you because you are open to creativity and possibility.
But keep your focus on the thing you committed to.
Why?
Because then your ideas start to trust you.
You start to trust you.
Finishing has a magic all its own.
So what do you write when you want to write everything?
Pick the most potent, more delicious, most interesting, most delight-full, more alive idea. Pick the one that makes you want to write it the most.
Don’t worry if you are good enough or ready to write it. (You are.)
Don’t worry if it’s the right idea.
Decide (There is no wrong decision here.)
Show up for it.
Finish: Experience the magic of DONE.
Repeat.
Choose something. Commit to it. Finish something.
Let the ideas flow and know that they are choosing you for a reason.
Make the magic happen.
With so much love,
MEGHAN GENGE
Writer of Magic
Teacher of Creation
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