The creative process is often an elusive one. It's also sometimes very cyclical. During any given novel, I will run through a number of stages. At first, there will be the euphoria of actually beginging a novel. At best, this generally lasts twenty pages or so. Unfortunately, the novelty of it all runs out and you're left wondering: What happens next? My harddrive is littered with the tattered remains of ideas that never reached the twenty-first page because I was never able to answer that question. When I'm able to answer that question, I press forward. At some point, the direction will become obscured again and I'm left asking myself that one question over and over again. As the questions become harder, the doubt becomes more pronounced and I begin to doubt my abilities. Before long, I'll be cursing myself as a talentless hack. Then it will come to me and I'll find new direction and new inspiration. Eventually, that well runs dry and I just don't know how to get from where I am to where I need to be for the next chapter. Up and down, round and round it goes.

Sometimes, the questions are insurmountable. I just don't know what to do and, in reality, without a major overhaul there isn't anything that I can do. The idea itself becomes corrupted and exposed as the shallow story that it is. Sometimes this occurs without me having written a single page. Sometimes the concept itself, while lending itself to countless great plot points and character development, just has one problem with it that I can't move beyond: Yes, this is the story, but what is the point?

I initially discovered this when writing my first attempt at a novel, The Slaughter Chronicles. It had scenes that I thought were glorious, but I just couldn't figure out how to make it more than just a story. Without that, I lacked the inspiration to press forward. I aborted it after sixty pages or so. Ideas later came to me, but I just couldn't find myself truly inspired.

It happened again a few years later. I had a superb idea for a novel that took place entirely in a chat room. I started writing it, but only got twenty pages into it. Even though the dialogue was going to be great and the characters were going to be great, I just couldn't make a compelling story without genuine human interaction involved that wasn't behind the safety of a keyboard and monitor. Ideas later came to me, but I just couldn't find myself truly inspired.

A couple years back, my friends at No-Lyfe Productions were talking about making a movie. The initial idea was deemed too ambitious so I was able to think of something we could concievably make. At the time, it was called Headcase and it was the story of the conversation in the mind of someone pushed to the brink of suicide, inspired by what had recently happened to someone close to me. Unfortunately, though the idea was "doable" it was not something that could inspire me to sit down and write it.

About 15 months ago or so, I went through a major heartbreak. Some months later, I wanted a way to be able to express what I had learned from it all. The problem was that every idea I came up with was too similar to my first novel, At Heaven's Door. I couldn't come up with what made this story truly unique. The story in my mind was written, but I couldn't derive a point to it all.

While I was coming up with the idea after the heartbreak, I was able to revive Headcase, the earlier movie script idea. Though I was nowhere near the brink of suicide, if I were to take a character that was more troubled and write it from his point of view, it could help me get a lot of the pent-up anger and resentment out of my system. Headcase was renamed Surviving Allison and it became a story of making sense of the incomprehendable... or at least trying to. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for Allison, I was able to get over what had happened a lot quicker and easier than I had thought possible. When I told Adam that it looked like it wasn't going to happen, I could only explain "It just doesn't hurt so bad anymore."

Instead, I found new inspiration in The Slaughter Chronicles and, much to my amazement, wrote the first book of what became a series. What's funny about it is that the idea had very little to do with what was originally concieved several years ago. But there were aspects of it that I just didn't want to let go. Ideas that had come to me but had not yet inspired me. The old was supplanted by the new and though I had to toss a lot aside, the story was much better as a result. I needed the time and distance to determine what made an idea close to my heart interesting and intriguing enough to be close to the hearts of others.

Last October I ran across a challenge to write a novel within a month. I'd finished the first Slaughter book, but I didn't want to rush through the second. So I needed an idea. Almost a year past the heartbreak that I wasn't able to put to paper, I was able to look at the situation much less passionately. I was able to remove the parts that were unique to me and make the story something of its own. Once I was able to create a main character that I could write without being constrained to writing about me and what happened to me, the ideas came rushing forward. The characters took on a life of their own, independent of their inspirations. That, of course, because my November Novel, aka Something So Perfect, linked to your left on this page.

Among the many questions I've been asking myself lately is what to write next. My editor is about to return his final edit version of SSP and I can work on that. Or I could write the next installment of Slaughter. I also had a breakthrough with the online idea from some years ago and suddenly that unworkable idea became workable.

It's amazing how that happens. It's like a dam being opened and water comes gushing out. Instead of a lack of ideas, you have so many ideas that the challenge becomes to sort them out. You have contradictory ideas that you must reconcile or choose between. You have characters that become living, breathing entities. The challenge is no longer to write it, but to refrain from doing so until you have it all figured out in your head. I say "you" but I'm talking about me. Maybe other writers do it differently, but when the dam is released I have difficulty thinking about anything else.

Last night I was talking to my roommate JD about financial matters. It occured to me that I have a couple thousand dollars more in the bank right now than I said I'd need to get the ball rolling on making a movie. The problem, I told him, was that all my ideas were not suitable for a first project and the one that was, Surviving Allison, just didn't inspire me. I had no desire to resurrect that heartbreak for the sole purpose of inflicting it on a fictional character and then exploiting his woes just to make a movie. Earlier today I was talking to a friend who is helping to organize an Anime convention. I mentioned an idea that I had about making a movie during a con about characters at a con and asked if that would be possible at the one she is helping to organize. She was quite excited about the idea.

The problem was, and is, that making a short movie in the course of a weekend may be possible with enough work, but only for the experienced. In other words, this couldn't be a first movie for its creators. So during lunch today I started thinking about Surviving Allison and looking for inspiration on it or, at the very least, figure out why I felt so uninspired.

Then it hit me.

I don't even know what idea came first, really. But within half an hour, I'd not only developed a completely new central character, but I'd redefined who the conversation in his mind was between. I believe that in part I have this blog to thank for that. While it's not a First, Second, and Third like I wrote below, it nonetheless gives a more firm identity to what before were only one-dimensional "aspects" of a personality. The character, instead of a carbon copy of the once poor and sad little me, took on a life completely of his own (which, incidentally, is a must regardless of how "personal" a writing project is) . And since it was no longer about a reckless hearted girl, I had to rename it once more. Surviving Allison was dead, long live Seven Voices.

The ideas have been rolling like thunder since and I don't see an end in sight. Maybe I'll run dry soon enough, but right now I can taste it.

I'm not entirely sure what comes next. I can't start anything until I finish recording my lines for Adjusters, but once I'm done I can hit the ground running.

The bad news is that soon I may have to cut down on my blogging during the script-writing portion of it all.

The good news is that right now it seems that I, with the help of my friends and whomever else volunteers, might just be making a movie.