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In one of those writer e-mail newsletter subscriptions I get was an article entitled "Creativity: Overcoming Too Many Ideas Syndrome". It involves the writer who finds themselves so overwhelmed by inspiration that they never seem to finish anything. As clunky a title as it is, I can fully relate to the concept of starting one new idea after another and then moving on. No closure, no fruition.

I was once told by a film school buddy of mine that some writers like being in "that" world so much they don't want to leave. I don't know if it's exactly that, though. I get so much out of the creative process. Sometimes I'm just not sure of the value of finishing. Building up the stack doesn't really seem to get me anywhere. All dressed up with no where to go, so to speak.

The thing is that I have plenty to say and I never lack a place to go next. There's always another story for me to tell or for me to go back to tell in a new way. I have never really had a fear of the oft-spoken about sophomore slump that affects filmmakers and musicians alike. For example, think of Kevin Smith's "Mallrats" as an example of a flick rushed out much too quickly or Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven" given much too slowly.

It's not so much about finishing something that really gets me. It's about giving it up to the world. Well, sort of...

The best example is what I've done with this journal. I've written about four or five entries during the past couple weeks and have had little or no inclination to post them. I find it sort of peculiar. Perhaps it's about the give and take with the instant commentary and analysis, the lack of reciprocation, the want of opening up and exposing parts of myself, but feeling ultimately needy, empty. And I'm left wishing many of my readers would be so bold. I think it's the actor's sensitivity: standing alone under the lights, quelling up with uncomfortable emotions, while the audience sits their critiquing.

The main difference is that this is me. I'm not playing a role, except the one I play everyday. I am the perception of who I think I am, of how someone like me walks through the world, of how I see every movement and thought. True, that's all siphoned through me before it gets here, but putting it out without the guise of created character and interwoven theme like I can do in fiction is something I am hardwired to avoid.

I've heard it said that "blogs [yuck] are for bloggers [double-yuck]" and the presumed audience is secondary, but I've always written with an audience in mind. I used to write personal journals in that same way, as if with some overwrought expectation that one day they will be referenced in some bombastic memoir.

Yeah, right.