Catching thoughts before they fly out of my head has been somewhat of a challenge, but what appears on this blog is what I've managed to catch and expand on. In a way, this blog is like one of those large bug collections that people spend months trying to create by wandering off in nature with huge nets and swiping around to see if they can catch anything interesting. I've caught a lot of flies, which I've tried to discard. I do feel as if I've caught some other cool insects, though. But then again, beauty is in the eye of the be(e)holder.
If (and when) you scroll through the posts I've made, you'll notice that most of the topics are rather simplistic. Titles like "Three Seconds", "Race" and "Flip Phones" are meant to give the impression that what I'm writing about will be dull and unimaginative, but what I've tried to do is take boring topics and create an interesting spin on them. For example, flip phones are mostly obsolete, and even those who continue to use them recognize that they are not up to date with the latest trends in technology. In a world of smartphones and Bluetooth devices, flip phones stick out like a sore thumb. But what if you could use this abnormality to your advantage? What if that nostalgic 90's flip phone could be used to make you stand out from the crowd in a good way?
These are the kinds of questions that I ponder and use to create original posts. Sometimes it works, and more often, it doesn't. For all of the posts that appear on this blog, there are about 3x more that have never come out of the drafts or are in the gutters of my discarded compositions. There are many reasons for why some of my thoughts don't translate well into written work. At times, it's because they are too specific, ambiguous, personal, or weird. At other times my thoughts fail to translate because they've spent too much time festering in my brain, and by that time the space for open imagination has severely diminished.
I tend to have the most success when I make the creative process as short as possible, meaning that when an idea pops into my head, I need to convert that idea into writing as soon as I can. Thoughts, in my opinion, are like milk, and writing about them is like making a bowl of cereal. When your thoughts are in the back of your head and not being used, it's just like having milk in the refrigerator. However, when you take that milk out of the refrigerator, it either needs to be used quickly or placed back in the fridge. If you only take 5 minutes (or less) to make your cereal, things usually turn out well. But if you leave the milk out for more than 15 minutes, or heaven-forbid leave your cereal sitting in the milk for that long, you'll undoubtedly have a bad experience. The milk won't be spoiled, but it won't be cold either, and the taste of lukewarm milk with cereal is not only disappointing, but gross as well. The timetable for writing a good post isn't quite this short, but the conception to creation time ratio is about the same.
The truth is, even when you pour the milk quickly and keep it fresh, your bowl of cereal is never guaranteed to turn out perfectly. Such is also the case with what I've written on this blog. Like I said, I've caught some flies and I've missed a few, but I've tried to leave what I believe are some of the most interesting things that I think about. Anyway, I'll let you be the one to decide whether I've ruined the cereal or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment