Missing: Creativity

It's strange, really strange. When I really have time to be creative, I usually don't get the ideas. (And the idea to this post was sparked by Elisabeth and her post about Multitasking and Creativity.)

Take my current work situation. We don't have much to do (which is absolutely atypical for the company I've just started working for - or so my boss tells me). Therefore I quite often get sent home early. That is okay by me - being at home and able to work on my stuff is much better than sitting in the office and waiting for something to turn up. But I'm more creative - usually at least - on days when I work my full eight hours and come home afterwards. Well, days like yesterday are an exception - I was home early and creative.

On the other hand, my little horror novel "Phoenix Song" (published here, search for the title or my nickname "Cay Reet"; it's also online at "Geschichtenschmiede", but the site itself is in German, although the story is not) was written while I was unemployed for a mere month. It's only about 80 pages, but then, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" isn't longer.

So I didn't write as much as I could have written (there's two crime novels waiting for completion on my hard disk) during the last year. I wasn't missing time, I was missing the drive to write and the creativity necessary for good writing. Instead I tended to my blog a lot.

To write good fiction, it seems, I need some stress - or a limited time resource. Then the fiction gives me a way to escape it, so I hope the drive to write will come back, now that I've got steady work again.

So what will I write? I'll definitely finish my crime novels one day - but they're both in German, the older one over a hundred pages long already. I'll also write a new Fantasy short story in German, as I've got an offer to maybe publish in an anthology (but I need a good plot first, the one from "Thorns" will not work again). Then there's "Teria" (*whistles innocently again*). And there are two fan fictions I'd like to finish: "Opposites Attract" and "Blood and Honour". "Surely not Barbie's Diary" also falls into that category for me - it's a fictional diary, after all. And whatever my sometimes over-imaginative mind might throw at me in the future...

Currently I'm not missing creativity ... and I hope it stays that way.