Snowflake Challenge Day 3

In your own space, talk about your creative process - from what inspires you to what motivates you to how you manage to break through blocks.

My creativity is mostly writing, so I'll answer based on that...

When I have an idea for a story, I write it down with a pen on notebook paper (I have several spiral notebooks for this purpose). Usually it's a fest I've signed up for and I try to comment on the prompts I think I might be able to do justice to.

So, I get an idea, write it down, along with any other nonsense I happen to think of at that time. Then, I put it down and let it percolate. If I get other ideas (usually dialog) I'll add those to the notebook. Sometimes, I write whole sections of story by hand before I ever turn on the Word program.

More often than not, I spend the bulk of the time limit either thinking about the story, wondering if I should back out, or despairing that I'm a hack with no talent and why do I do this to myself.

About a month or less before the deadline, if I haven't already backed out, I figure it's too late at that point, so I panic.

A week later, usually, more ideas come to me and I'm ready to sit at the computer and hash it all out. I literally get a flash of inspiration which causes me to go 'duh' and wonder why it didn't occur to me a month earlier...and then I spend the last two weeks (or LESS) in a flurry of keyboard pounding. My gorgeous numero uno beta, islandsmoke, is then tasked with turning the story around in less than a week (if she's lucky--the last one she did in 3 days). I am fortunate enough to have a couple of back ups, just in case, because I know how crappy that is to do to someone--but I just don't seem to be able to find my ideas before the last month of the time limit.

I wish it was different.

Maybe that's why my novel isn't finished yet. No hard, do or die deadline.