Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46068
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46068
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

An option that I see often used in November during NanoWrimo is to "free the plot bunnies" -- if an idea occurs to you (maybe a Leprechaun/Ghoul romance and a particular issue to solve), but you really don't like romances, you can post the sketch of the idea into a "plot bunnies" thread, and then anyone who DOES want to do a supernatural romance, but is tired of vampires, can take your concept and run with it! Several someones could!

[Elizabeth Gilbert's TED Talk about "genius](https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius)" may be helpful -- the idea may come to you, but if it's not the right one for you, that's ok -- you can publicize it to let it find a good home, or just ignore it and it will find a different artist.

> ...the musician Tom Waits,... for most of his life, he was pretty much the embodiment of the tormented contemporary modern artist, trying to control and manage and dominate these sort of uncontrollable creative impulses that were totally internalized.

...

> So he starts to feel all of that old anxiety start to rise in him like, "I'm going to lose this thing, and I'll be be haunted by this song forever. I'm not good enough, and I can't do it." And instead of panicking, he just stopped. He just stopped that whole mental process and he did something completely novel. He just looked up at the sky, and he said, "Excuse me, can you not see that I'm driving? Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment when I can take care of you. Otherwise, go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen."
> 
> And his whole work process changed after that. Not the work, the work was still oftentimes as dark as ever. But the process, and the heavy anxiety around it was released when he took the genie, the genius out of him where it was causing nothing but trouble, and released it back where it came from, and realized that this didn't have to be this internalized, tormented thing

Original score: 4