When Dreams Are Too Much..The Pen In Your Pocket

[HellsKitchenmanNYC]

...they sometimes come out at you and make you run for pen. You half remember and bang head on the wall. You reassemble a thought..a train of thought....it's half what you meant.
Sometimes you wake up and have 15 paragraphs and before you can throw the blanket off it's gone. What do you do? Those great ideas are lost.
All you can do is carry a pen and pad in yr pocket.
Things hit you: ideas, images, sentences and sometimes whole paragraphs. You need to stop, you NEED to stop and write them down or you'll slpa yrself later when the idea is gone.
A dirt road you dreamed of sometimes becomes a whole noir as you're wandering around b/c the images flow thru yr head as if someone sent them, but you also know it's you who sent them. Sometimes an idea is sent like some strange xray/cathode ray thru yr head and a whole new world evolves....it's sentences, it's rhymes, it's paragraphs...it's character descriptions, it's storylines....it's total pictures of the characters.
You dig?

 

[HellsKitchenmanNYC]

There are times when 7 voices talk to you...wether it's the same story or not. It might be like drawing a circle and 6 other ones inside it...as they spin around their worlds exist at the same time. Your job is to stop them from speaking at the same time, find different pieces of paper and make notes, quote those people talking to you and try to not misquote them.

 

[HellsKitchenmanNYC]

It's the pen in your pocket that's truly is your friend .It helps you when all the other words go to the wind Grab it and rub it drag it across yr forehead Without it, without it your words would surely be dead. Mr. Eraser what happened to you You ...died like other things... Were you pink or were you blue? I still love you Mr Eraser so proud and plump there Waiting for my mistakes your paycheck to claim w/cheer!

 

[2322]

All I can tell you is the experience I've had. In my life I've known a few authors, a few who were extremely successful. The only one I knew who could sit down and be brilliant right out of typewriter was Asimov.

The polar opposite was Margaret Daniel.

Both were exceptionally talented. I often feel Mrs. Daniel didn't quite get her due because of her famous parents but she was extremely incisive. She would have made an exceptional diplomat. But she couldn't sit at a typewriter and be brilliant like Asimov was. Her writing style was to dictate into a pocket recorder, sketch notes, and think through everything almost acting it out as it went through her mind. Ideas could strike her at any time because, I suspect, she always had her background thoughts devoted to ideas for her books. Mrs. Daniel took her pocket recorder everywhere. It was always in her pocket, not her purse. She could be doing anything, even engaging in conversation, excuse herself, and then make a note into the recorder. She and her secretary would then assemble all the notes and piece them together and voila! A book was made. Even when in the process of writing, she would dictate, frequently walking or standing, as the plot and characters developed. I couldn't imagine her actually sitting in front of a typewriter. Her mind was too quick for that.

I suspect that your style is much like Mrs. Daniel's. Carry a recorder around, transcribe your notes, edit them, then piece them all together and see what you've got. If you're serious about this, try it. Get a cheap pocket recorder and carry it around with you, keep it next to the bed, in the bathroom, anything! Let it work for you as a way to capture your spontaneous thoughts so that you can remember them and organize them later.

Mrs. Daniel wrote a lot of best sellers this way so don't think it doesn't work.