Has it really taken me this long to figure out the flaw in my writing philosophy? Possibly so.

Last night, I had what one could characterize as “an explosion of creativity,” during which I rapidly whipped out a short narrative of 1100 words. I thought more about those words later in the evening, and realizing that I have a lot of similar ideas that I could string together, I figure I could have myself a neat little 5-8 thousand word story by the end of the week.

And my question of myself today is, “why the hell haven’t I always just acted on these impulses?” My tendancy has always been to catalogue them, file them, allow them to percolate and eventually have them lead to nothing. I have a file drawer full of half-good, under-developed ideas, but what good is that doing me? Really nothing.

I should be acting on all of these ideas as quickly as possible, because a completely written story that’s shit is always better than a fleeting idea that’s awesome. At least the shit story gives you something to work with. And, if you have some shit stories, when people ask you what you’ve written, you can say, “Well, this, this, this and this. They need a little work, but they’re done.” The other nice thing? The more you just do, the better you get and the less you have to follow up on later.

In all honesty, what I’ve been trying to do the last couple weeks is to use the Internet only for things that are absolutely required, and leave the TV turned off unless I’m actually watching one of my stories, because those two things alone have freed up a considerable amount of time.

So anyway, I’m at work and I’m going to do some other stuff. Have yourself a fine Tuesday…