It happened again.
Quite a while ago, I wrote about inspiration and timing and how life gets in the way of being creative. This morning, I got stuck in a traffic jam from an accident and was watching some of the cars jockeying for position and stealing any small space they could get. It got me thinking of the typical sociological study of humans dealing with scarcity of resources.
A short story started to form in my mind with all the elements I typically rant about: overpopulation, class warfare, unwillingness to work together, entitlement (not of the typically-accused have-nots, but of the have-enough-demand-mores), all set in a dystopian future, which seems closer every year. But the more I built the elements up in my mind, the more they got crowded out by the things I had to do today at work.
Ah, what if I wasn’t working? I could get out of the traffic jam, grab a notebook and jot down ideas. Then when I got home, I could start writing a nice, depressing short story. I recently read a Stephen King book – I think it was “On Writing.” King talks about his experience being a writer and some of the ways to be an effective writer. The biggest thing I got out of the book is the balance between being alone so you can create and getting out and building experience and inspiration to create.
I suppose it could be possible that I could carry this idea for the rest of the day and work on it after work, but I’m in a profession where you have to use your brain pretty heavily throughout the day, so I can’t keep these ideas up in the air like juggling balls. Back in the old days of pizza delivery, absolutely, I could. But, life gets in the way.
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