Skydeas™

I have ideas. I am Sky. Therefore, I have Skydeas™! But where do Skydeas™ come from? Are they like mana from MMORPG heaven? Do I have a barrel of Skydeas™ like some people have barrels of monkeys? Do I catch them with a butterfly net and mace? Do I have a pair of mommy and daddy Skydeas™ which I give oysters and chocolate and copious amounts of wine to in order to encourage them to create baby Skydeas™ for me?

I have to be honest, Skydeas™ aren't so esoteric as all that. They are actually very easy to come by in just a three easy steps:

• Step One: Get some Smarties. 
• Step Two: Get some bacon.
• Step Three: Get some ideas.

I know what you're thinking: Sky, I understand the bacon, it's inspirational, but Smarties? How does that lead to getting ideas?

Aside from the fact that they're Smarties and I've been eating them for years and I always got pretty good grades in school and so they must work, to get said Smarties and the bacon, you must go to a store. When you go to a store, you see things. When you see things, your mind stores the things. Then one day, you're standing in line at Walmart with your Mullet Master At-Home-Barbering Kit and your basket of BBQ pork rinds when it hits you: IDEAS!

You are suddenly reminded of the day you went to get Smarties and saw the lady in the purple and pink paisley muumuu slip and fall in the chicken meat aisle on some chicken juice and wondered, "Why can't clothes have airbags?" And then you see the guy in front of you has a bag of Donkey Mix for Healthy Donkeys and wondered, "Why can't donkeys have airbags?" And then you put them both together and wonder, "What would happen if our society became so paranoid of injury and pain that clothing, donkeys, and everything else was wrapped in airbags and we lost our situational awareness? How would that affect how we move through the world? Would we be more careful or less? And what if the airbags started to fail? How would our airbagless society cope with such a sweeping change in our tactile interactions?"

So get out there, experience the world, and get ideas. Just not Skydeas™. Those are mine.

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Stray Thoughts: Get the Funk Out

On Saturday, March 10th, I turned 39. The week leading up to this was spring break for my university. I spent the entire week gorging myself on carbs and staring at the computer screen, unable to string any words together. Some might call this writer's block, some might call it a lack of motivation, I call it a funk.

I have never been a big fan of my own birthdays, especially now. The strain of this past birthday was not only internal, but external. For personal reasons that I won't go into here, this past birthday has been one of my least favorites ever. Additionally, my writing has suffered, my creativity has suffered, and my humor has suffered.

Many writers, I suspect, fall into this kind of funk from time-to-time for various reasons, and they all have different ways to pull themselves out of it. For me, it's deadlines. A deadline gives me the motivation, the adrenaline boost, that kicks me in the rear and gets me going.

And I have a deadline coming up.

No later than April 1, but preferably by next weekend, I need to complete the second draft of a short story. Once this draft is complete, I have to mail it off to the organizer of the writing conference I'm attending in April. I'm in a master class with five other writers and a published author and we will be critiquing manuscripts. My story is a sci-fi short written from a point-of-view that is risky, to say the least, and it is a story that I hope I can expand into a novel one day.

The funk is still there trying very hard to urge me back to mindless TV and pointless web surfing, but the deadline won't permit that. The deadline is key to getting me back in the writing habit. The deadline is wonderful. I know that, as a writer, I may not always have deadlines other than the ones that I impose upon myself, but for now, this deadline couldn't have come at a better time.

How do you shake the funk when life gets you down or drags you away from your writing for an extended period? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

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