"Things come to me in driblets, and when the driblets come I have to work hard to make them into something coherent."
~ Aldous Huxley
Have you ever related to the words of Mr. Huxley? I was actually feeling this way all week and just had to write the quote down when I came across it. You see, I'm one of those people who takes a lot of notes. When an idea comes to me, I HAVE to write it down, or I'll forget it and kick myself for it later. However, when I gather up all of my napkins, or open up my notebook, I have driblets; notes that I have jotted down in a hurry. I sit there reading through them thinking, "Wow! That was great! ... I wonder where I was going with it." Has that ever happened to you?
It happens to me WAY too often. I then have to take my driblets and work hard to turn them into a completed work. Something more than a quote or though summery. Something worth reading. I think that's what Mr. Huxley might have meant when he wrote the above words. Granted he died in 1963 so I will never know for sure. But as a writer, I'm pretty sure I know exactly how he felt. My original thought was simply to cure this by never writing notes, but just stopping in my tracks to finish every single thing I started as soon as it jumped into my mind. - commence laughing. Okay, so that isn't really realistic... at all. It wouldn't be realistic even if I didn't have four kids, a husband and pets, but when you add them all in, it's down right comical. Great ideas don't usually come at convenient times for me. They come when I'm living life. I could be at the grocery store, at the park, in the bath tub... anywhere. So I'm left with driblets, and just like Mr. Huxley, I work hard to make them coherent works later on.
Do you suffer from driblets? How do you handle it?
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