Chaos to clarity?

Or, is the jumble in my head leading somewhere?

I don’t have a hard time brainstorming and coming up with ideas. And they come out clearly enough that I can usually sit down, organize my thoughts and write them out coherently. My problem lies in having too many thoughts, ideas and light bulb moments. And I can seem like a disorganized (disoriented) mess when brainstorming. That glazed eyes and staring off into the distance with a smile look.

So I:
-Take my ideas for granted and not seriously

-Write them in a notebook then forget about them

-Never bother writing them down then eventually forget them

-Give them away

-Don’t have time to explore or build them all

-Make myself crazy by trying to frantically follow up on more of them than is realistic

Creativity is such a blessing. The world takes on a magical light when you dress up the realities around you. I romanticize everything and have since I was a child (also known as denial). This quality makes you an optimist (because if you don’t like something you dress it up internally and move on). It’s also a good one for a writer. I really see the beauty outside my window and how that might shape people, good or bad.

Visiting Watts last week had a profound impact on my imagination. Parts weren’t so easy to romanticize. There was beauty in the people and some of the interactions I saw, but the back drop was grim.

How do you dress up the realities that defy denial?

Busy…busy…and staying super busy I’m now sitting down to reflect on all of the people I’ve met and spoken with over the past week. Then I need to ponder what I read. Jumble up the mess with my brain storms and scrawled notes and you get chaos. But as I now just stop and search for the clarity within, pictures are taking shape.

What is magic? Wonderment or mastery? That’s part of the clarity I’m seeking in an issue still internally in chaos.



Picture from the Jet Propulsion Lab

Shooting a video for Captive this weekend

This weekend we'll be shooting a video for Captive (thank you Amy Sommer). My kids will be there; helpers, not "extras". We mulled over the video strategy: why I wrote the book, what I hoped to accomplish and how I felt about the related issues.

Terrorism is a heated topic. I took UCLA extension classes while writing this novel to learn how to write it better. At the beginning of each new session at least one fellow class mate would take offense at the topic and my "politics". What are my politics? Pretty quickly that person would realize that they had judged too soon and the book itself wasn't nearly as polarizing as they'd assumed.

Writing about terrorism allows for the posibility of controversy. Related attention can help sell books. But that isn't the point of the novel. People grow up in vastly different societies and make decisions (at an early age) based on what opportunities are available to them.

I had a conversation last night with someone who had volunteered as a criminal defense attorney during law school. One of his clients got the death penalty. Yet that client was a broken and brutalized man. How much choice and free will is due to circumstance? Read Captive to see how I address that question.