I was talking to a friend recently about ideas. The sort that pile up in the attics of your brain or sketchbook and have yet to happen--mostly because ordinary life, even other creative projects, get in the way. I have so many of these it's hard to keep track, but I try, in the hope that eventually I'll get there. Sometimes, it takes years to see things to fruition. Sometimes I'll take a shiny new one and run with it, but then all the others get left behind and it hardly seems fair for the others sitting on the shelf.
My friend recently had been to a meeting with other faculty & staff members and discussing projects to raise money for the faculty/staff scholarship fund. This year's endeavor was a giant blue papier mache poodle unveiled during Manifest (I'm not officially on the committee they meet way, way too often and I hate committees in general, but I do help out when it comes to decorating and festivities sometimes.) Someone else had suggested they do some brainstorming creative exersizes to get ideas for next year, which she agreed, were very much NOT needed as she already had 6,000 suggestions that might work and was ready to find one that caught the committees interest.
When we were in our first years of library programming endeavors, people often wondered how we had so many ideas. For workshops, for panels, for focus topics. What I didn't share were the back burners, or the ones that were a little too costly or the effort vs result ratio was poor. I have suggestions for workshop ideas in my notebook that have been there for 3 or more years that I'm still hoping to make happen down the line. And maybe they'll happen, or maybe they'll get pushed out of the way by newer, better ideas.
In my notebook, there is a page full of tiny post-its for art projects, another with writing projects. Another with anthology projects and other press doings. Another with crafty things I'd like to make for the shop. This is all in addition to the half finished things--like unusual creatures, postcards from the blue swallow, the mermaid anthology, swim. They stand like a weight in my other hand while the things I do finish or see to the end balance in the other. I try not to let them get too out of whack, otherwise I flounder about feeling like I never finish anything I've started. But I remind myself I do. Just not those particular things.
