My Area 51

THIRD Monday of April, 2011, Blog 51.

Sometimes I’ve got nothing to say, but anyone that knows me, or has ever spoken to me for more than 5 minutes will realize that me having nothing to say, RARELY stops me from saying something…

I write a lot, or at least try to. It’s never as much as I want to, or perhaps the right thing to say is that the QUALITY of what I write, is never what I want it to be. My only hope is that like finding the right person in your life, sometimes, comin' up with good material is a matter of NUMBERS. You must come up with (i.e. write) many ideas to create some good ones. The line regarding the “right person” analogy, is to find a prince, you gotta kiss a bunch of frogs…

I keep track of all the idea “frogs” ( as opposed to the people "frogs") just in case in the future, those ideas manage to turn into a prince or two, and it happens now and again. Yep, an old idea, that has been collecting dust, (in some file of half thoughts, and unfinished ideas, that I think of as my own personal “Area 51”) crosses the desk and gets to be seen in the bright new idea light again, and while being vectored through the prism of the same old brain, sometimes, this view can be like catching up with a old friend, that I just THOUGHT was a frog. It’s a different kind of thrill than coming up with a brand new idea. Not better, not worse, just real GOOD when it happens.

This way (for me) is admittedly a bit slower, because many of the ideas still don’t have any gas that’s gonna get you anywhere. (And sometimes I wonder what I was thinking that I EVER thought some old idea was FUNNY… which’s why I think of these bits as “Area 51.”) But mostly, it’s not swimming through molasses, I can get through it fairly easy, and my thought about this process is: if it was funny once (funny ENOUGH to write down…) then the germ of the idea might be enough to spawn a good contemporary bubble that now gets a laugh.

And so I venture through Area 51, spend some time in my creative process going over the old stuff, hoping to make it into NEW stuff. And more often lately, when my current oasis of creativity is dry, dropping by the old well has proven valuable.

It's clear to me that Area 51 has SOMETHING, I mean, you never hear about Area 52.

Good luck, and keep laughing.