One of the brightest areas of my creative spirit is creative writing. Let me quickly run you through all the story projects I’ve done from day one.
My first novel was titled “Dolphin Island” which I wrote in 2011 after watching the movies “Free Willy” and “Dolphin Tale”. It was immense work, and I reworked the story’s timeline and chapters numerous times, eventually extending it to almost 30 chapters. Although I did have access to a computer at the time, I did not know how to use Microsoft Word, and my creative spirit just flowed more naturally with a pencil at the time. So I wrote the entire thing on paper – three whole notebooks of it, which I still have to this day.
The next three story ideas started in 2013: Project X.20 (a story about a group of adventurous spy teens), Secrets of the Forest (a story about a teenage boy who discovers a group of fairies in the forest near his countryside home), and Bindi: Our Flippered Friend (a story about siblings raising a sea lion pup in a California apartment). I got fairly far with these, but none reached completion – except for one Project X.20 novel (I originally intended it to be a series).
In late 2014, I discovered My Little Pony, and things really started to take off. One of my story ideas was Equestria: An Adventure (think Jurassic Park + petting zoo with My Little Pony ponies instead of dinosaurs). Unfortunately, the Microsoft Word file was permanently deleted in a folder clean-up gone wrong. Starting in 2015, I wrote about fifteen fanfiction stories, ten of which I have kept in an archive on FimFiction.net, and seven I preserved for all to enjoy in PDF format and also on Wattpad.
In 2016, I came up with other novel ideas: Three Shades (a trilogy about the long, hard effort of three orphan kids whose circumstances bring them together to find shelter and care), and Scales (a novel about a boy who slowly turns into a dragon shortly after receiving a blood transfusion due to a serious injury). Like so many other ideas, Three Shades was scrapped, but Scales survived, and I worked my butt off throughout summer 2016 to finish it – and it was one of the greatest accomplishments of my entire writing journey since the Dolphin Island days. I felt really happy about it.
From 2019 onward, more ideas have come and gone, and a few have stayed. Two – Mutant Island and Project Airdream – were re-worked from the original skeleton, and nurtured fairly well with event flowcharts and character sculpting, though I have recently scrapped Project Airdream. Sadly, around this time I inavertedly deleted Secrets of the Forest. Now this is where the 4th generation of My Little Pony ended, leading to creative self-rediscovery. Because now (and I’ve touched on this before), I was no longer confined to the hooved borders, I could gradually start willingly take inspiration from other entertainment mediums. My story ideas began to feel more solidified, more concrete, more stable and feasible.
With an increased level of writing knowledge and usage of productivity apps such as Microsoft OneNote, Notion, and Whimsical, I’m able to properly plan out stories much better than I did in the past. So why are random ideas still spazzing up seemingly out of nowhere?
This is due to the “open-borders” or “filter-less” configuration we tend to set ourselves to, where we immediately accept and embrace every single creative idea that comes to mind which makes us feel excited and motivated. We expand on it a little, drag on with little fleeting moments in the story where we imagine this totally cool and rad situation with the characters… and then that’s it. No examination of formal story structure, no first draft of the first chapter, nothing. The idea just sits like an abandoned mansion as the next “awesome” and “totally amazing” visual architecture and features are drawn up for the next big house.
After many long years, I have finally understood the importance of putting a cap on your creative spirit, otherwise it will control you, overwhelm your hard-working “doer” part of you, and eventually drive you mad. Knowing when to stop drumming up new ideas and focus on determining the feasibility of existing ones is a key step in being a great writer.
Too many options leads nowhere with nothing getting done – and will kill you. Give yourself 20 or even two colors to paint with – not 2,000.