'Fool' Said my Muse to me

Over the last few days, I've been working on getting the site's layout back into shape. But standing in the kitchen earlier, just listening to the background noise of thoughts running through my head - thoughts for a new comic idea, thoughts about how best to spec my character in Dark Souls - listening to all of these thoughts, I remembered something I wrote two years ago. It was for Splendid Fred back when it was a magazine rather than a theatre company, about the importance of writing down these random ideas. I also remembered another post I wrote way back about the importance of keeping myself writing, and now I look at the empty posting calendar over there and feel a bit guilty. So here I am to flesh out one of the ideas at the sink: I have gotten myself a little lost. I have a project I started, you see; a fantasy novel with a big idea and a grand, sweeping scale. And unfortunately, it's such a big idea that it's crushing all the fledgling little ideas that could have been with it's weight. Everything about the book is hard to write - the third person style, the world building, the plot weaving... And it gets me to thinking that right now, the biggest obstacle in the way of me right now is me. I mean, I can write. This is readable, and you're reading it right now, so I'm writing. Blogging is easier because it's just me being me. And yet the last few times I've sat down to do so, I've mentally thought myself out of it because I feel I should be doing some 'proper' writing, or I don't have any ideas or subjects to write about. I do, it's just that right now I'm letting them escape while I'm at the kitchen sink, or in the shower or on the xbox. Or, I look at minor inconsistencies in the layout, like the impossibility of convincing the site that there's a margin (or there's supposed to be) between the next page button and the list of pages. Which really doesn't matter at all if there's no actual content on the page to look at. Hence the long gaps in the posting history. But I'm going to start trying again. Again. End on a poem:

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, That She, dear She, might take some pleasure of my pain, —Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain— I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain, Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain. But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay; Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows; And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way. Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite— “Fool!” said my Muse to me "look in thy heart, and write!" - Sir Philip Sydney http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/7274/

So yeah, it turns out that history has already covered the subject of getting so stuck trying to write that you forget to write.