Doin’ It My Way is where I share the decisions, discoveries, and occasional detours that come with creating a life after 70. Not advice. Just what I’m learning as I go.
~~~~~~>
I’ve always been full of ideas. In fact, when my friends hear me say, “I have an idea,” they cover their eyes and say, “Uh oh.”
Too many directions that interest me. Too many projects that seem possible if only I had enough time, enough energy, enough years, enough shelves, enough notebooks, enough lives.
Years ago, a friend said to me, “You’re like a kid in a candy shop. If only you would focus on one thing, you’d be highly successful.”
I know she didn’t mean it unkindly.
But I resented it. It made my curiosity sound childish and my enthusiasm undisciplined. Like the way my mind worked was something I should outgrow.
Having a lot of ideas can look exciting from the outside. Inside, it can feel like noise. You don’t know which idea to trust or which one deserves your time. You start one thing, then another one tugs at you.
I used to think the problem was that I lacked focus.
I think now the problem was that I hadn’t found the thread yet.
When I first started writing fiction, I did not begin with a clean master plan. I didn’t sit down with the entire Women of the Canyon world organized in my mind. When I began, I didn’t know I was heading toward a five book series.
I followed Riley first, because she showed up through my gardening work.
Then came Quinn, Raven, Skylar, and Val.
At first I didn’t fully understand what they were all doing there. I only knew they kept asking for my attention. Over time the thread got clearer. What was the role of the canyon? What were these women really doing there, beyond the story?
I couldn’t have seen any of that at the beginning. I had to start somewhere.
I didn’t need the whole thing mapped out. I just needed a first thread.
So now when I hear a woman tell me she has too many ideas, I don’t hear it as a flaw. Memories, scenes, characters, questions, bits of family history, things she lived through, things she imagined, things she wrote down once and forgot about. Everything talking at once. Of course it’s hard to know where to begin.
The problem was never that I had too many ideas.
It was untangling them.
🪡~~~~
Have you felt challenged with too many ideas? Tell me I’m not alone.
Comment or reply and share what has tangled you up.
Have you been living in my journal? I feel like my kitten who can't decide which toy to play with when the light beam shines through the window. I don't have ADHD, that's confirmed. I just have so many ideas that I don't know where to start sometimes. Then, I want to throw them all in whatever I'm writing.
It's only recently that I;'e begun to think that I just have loads of interests and that's okay. I know when I focus, on anything, I accomplish things, regardless of whether it is a step in the right direction of 5 different things, or several steps with one thing. But I am still trying to bat off (sometimes) the critical voice that says 'you need to finish this first, before you start that...'