Just Because I Have the Attention Span of a Goldfish . . .

does not mean you can feed me fish flakes.

Since the word go I have always wanted to be a writer. Well, ok, I wanted to be a garbage (wo)man when I was three, a paleontologist when I was six (thank you Jurassic Park) and a Storm Chaser when I was ten (Thank you Twister). . . but after that, it was all about the written word. It was at that young age that I realized I COULD do all of those things and more if I created the worlds, if I wrote the stories. And so began my quest to tell stories. Just don’t ask about the garbage man thing, I still don’t know where the devil that one came from. The problem is that I have such a short attention span—ooooh! Shiny!!

Sorry, where was I? Oh, right. I have such a short attention span that it’s hard for me to sit down and focus on any one story for very long. I have no less than twenty different novel or series concepts floating around my head that it has proven to be a full time job in and of itself just to sift through them all to focus on any one thing. For example, Gestalt is a concept I thought up for some little writing exercise my 5^th grade teacher told us to do. Thirteen years later it has gone through a dozen re-imaginings, added characters, dropped characters, name changes both in title and in characters and so on. In that time I started working on Shadows Fade, the concept that spawned Ethereal Heart (unintentionally). I’ve also had ideas for a couple of Sci-fi novels and so on.

My point, I guess, is that in the three months that I have back at it on Gestalt for its fourth re-imagining I have only written about 170 pages. That’s double-spaced. I was psyched about my progress at the end of December but since then I have only been able to do a few chapters every couple weeks and it gets really discouraging. I am trying my damndest not to make it spiral downward into a never ending maelstrom of doubt, but it’s proving to be difficult. To combat this I’ve even gone so far as to almost always have the word document up on my screen when I am at the computer—which is most of the time. It’s helped a bit, but I wonder if I need more help. I’ve never been tested for ADD at all, but I’m beginning to think that I may need to be, and to get onto some kind of regiment that will help me to focus on things. All of my thoughts and all of my ideas are clear as day and I know what I want to write, it’s just finding how and to actually get myself to do it.

The good news is that I found a way of introducing another of the main cast tonight. Hurray for small victories!

Cheers!

~Hoshi

PS. Yes, my parents took me to see Jurassic Park when I was six years old. My best friend at the time tried to hide under her seat and I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. I’m twisted.

Ooh! Fish flakes!