INSTANT GRATIFICATION

We seem to live in a world today of "instant gratification". No one wants to wait for anything anymore. Fast food, faster internet connections, faster speed limits on our highways, build houses, make cars...faster...forget craftsmanship...just "get er done". We're raising a generation of impatient people.

If you are a writer you cannot be ruled by instant gratification. Writing anything worth reading is a slow, tedious process and you must move forward to "the end" one step at a time. Ideas have to incubate sometimes. They may seem wonderful when they first hit your brain's creativity spot, but if you give them some time to wander around in there...sometimes you may end up realizing that you need to move on to something else or change the way that idea popped up in your mind to begin with. It's okay. It's okay to not just run with everything that moves us. It's okay to throw some thoughts away. It's okay to re-arrange our thinking about stories and plots...till sometimes you won't even recognize them in the end.

When I started to write my "oooo-lala" novel I thought I had the story all lined up. I'd made a ton of notes and thought I knew exactly what this story and it's characters were about, where it would go and where it would end. But now, weeks later, I've let that story process for awhile in my brain and it is morphing even as we speak. Oh, the basic concept will be the same, but the end result will be so much better than I first imagined it. If I had leapt toward "instant gratification" this story would have been just bland, so-so and I would have missed out on an opportunity to create something I'd be really proud of.

So, if you're a writer, don't run toward the finish line. Move at a steady pace and if you need time to put your project on the back burner and let it simmer awhile, then that's okay too. Just don't let it sit there so long that it totally evaporates and you end up with nothing more than a burned pot.