We're All All Write

I have a larger circle of writer-friends now than I ever have in the past. It's pretty incredible - frankly, amazing and inspiring - to be surrounded by so many ideas, so much enthusiasm, so many worthy verbal sparring partners and written-project-collaborators.

It can also be a hard to stay on track with any one project when there are so many being tossed around. It can get a little overwhelming. Not just on the group level, but on the individual level. One person's idea will give me another idea, and then someone else has a third that just sounds so much fun... and suddenly we reach the point of the overwhelm. Well, I do, at least. Sometimes I start to feel like the big-eyed girl staring at an all you can eat buffet, clutching my tiny plate like a shield as I head in to battle: everything looks so good! And it's all you can eat! But as my mother frequently reminds me at such buffets "All-you-can-eat is not a personal challenge, Beth."

(The above paragraph, I must confess, at some point stopped being a metaphor and just became an anecdote. I really do eat too much at buffets, and my mom really does remind me -and my Dad! - that buffet eating is not a competitive sport...)

Wait a minute! Look at that parenthetical! Ha! There! You see?! I got sidetracked just writing this blog, on my own...

To return to the topic at hand, I have fantastically creative friends with an overabundance of good ideas and projects waiting-to-be-tackled. An old and cliched question arises: can you have too much of a good thing? In this case - are we creating a sort of reverse-writer's block, where instead of blanking because we have no good ideas, we are stalling because we have too many? It feels sometimes like we get stuck in a traffic jam of our own creation, throwing up writer's roadblocks as we write a paragraph on this project, change channels and crank out an outline for another great project, hit the scan button again and remember this super-duper idea I had when I was twelve that I just never got to --

Yes. I think the traffic jam is (figuratively) real.

However, I don't think the answer is to get out of the car, or shake fists at the other drivers, or shout obscenities to try and get traffic moving again. I think instead we need to install some stoplights. Get off the freeway now and then to refuel when we need a break. Learn to take the back roads when we need to, and learn to share the road. We just need to get traffic under control - red light, green light, left turn, right turn, slow down, speed up, pull over when we get lost. We can learn to use maps. Plan out the journey, but still leave room for some sidetrips and detours. One project, the next, the next - and once again, we're all all write.

(Except for me and my overly metaphoric, punforgivable posts. Thanks for not revoking my writer's card, y'all.)