Headbutting the creative process

The wedding scrapbook, she is actually coming together.

I've spent three or four hours cross-legged behind mounds of photo tape, cardstock, decorative sticky-things and glitter pens, and I haven't lost my mind yet. Better still, the scrapbook doesn't look like the creation of a 4 year-old child -- although those 4 year-old concoctions often bodyslam what I can produce. I'm four pages into it, and I'm trying not to feel too smug about the fact that I can layer things in pretty patterns. This marks significant progress from my initial foray into a crafts store four weeks ago, when I suddenly started quivering like a spooked horse, eyes rolling and nostrils flaring as I confronted unending rows of brads and stencils. Now, I'm glad I checked my original instinct to bolt back out the door towards my familiar, cluttered world.

My final product won't win any highbrow scrapbook awards (yes, there are people who pursue such accomplishments), but it won't be something I hastily kick under the nearest piece of furniture when friends or relatives visit.

The other, technically more important creation is moldering in the grave. My ambitious plans to write a novel this summer have turned into dimming hopes of completing half a chapter. I think I'm going to be a late-blooming author. I have this uncanny knack of being able to come up with great ideas, which I promptly fail to develop or follow-through for more than a few pages. Plots I can do, at least beginnings and ends. Middle ground and character development? Well, it would help if I weren't hell-bent on writing the Great American Novel, which makes anything I do seem sub-par.

Writing is a bitch. Anyone who states otherwise is lying to you. Love it I may, but it doth make my head hurt.