The founder of the company I work for has a saying: “Thoughts are things”. Right now I would very much like for my thoughts to become things.

The creative center of my brain is protesting the fact that I haven’t had a real vacation in like…over a year. I’m not even talking about going somewhere, I’m just talking about more than a 3-day weekend off work. Oh, that doesn’t include me checking my Blackberry (aka the leash) every half hour.

I don’t have the leash right now – I haven’t been at new job long enough to get one. This is fine with me. But I also find myself in the ambivilent position of being a contractor, and getting paid hourly, so taking days of means I don’t get paid. Don’t get me wrong, I like the job, and I don’t mind ‘clocking in’ every day, but…

I think it’s making my creativity suffer. Or at least my ability to get my creativity on paper. I log on and stare blankly at Word for hours on end (whether there’s already content on the page or not).

Or at least, that’s my excuse for the week over why I’m not getting any writing done ^_^

There are a group of us working on a couple of novella anthologies. I was on a publisher’s site one day (one who’s printing one of my short stories in an anthology at the end of the year), and saw that they occasionally consider novella anthologies. They then listed a series of guidelines, and I said “hey, that sounds like fun.”

So a group of us picked a couple of topics/worlds/ideas, and we’re all basing our stories around this. We have to be done by November, with critique-able drafts ready in about a month. One of our participants has already finished her first draft. She’s writing in a different universe than I am. Originally I said “I’m gonna go back and write in both worlds”, but given the pace I’m working at…that’s not going to happen.

Another of us created the original story that the character I’m writing came from. So technically, she’s like halfway done with her first draft, too.

Me? I have an opening and closing scene in my head. And character names that keep changing. When I came up with this idea it begged me to be written. It was so desparate to see the light of day that it was willing to change shape and form almost immediately to fit into this novella anthology. My stories are never willing to morph that early on. But this one came to me in a dream, and haunted me for days until I listened to it.

And I keep telling myself “Just write it. Go back and fix it later if you don’t like it.” And then I stare at that blank piece of paper again. I even wrote a backstory short story – not intentionally. The idea was already there for the short story and then when I came up with this new idea, I realized the two went together. Like my subconscious knew it all along and had just decided to let me in on the secret.

I wish it would let me in on the purging my thoughts secret. Any suggestiosn for finding solitude long enough to get in the right frame of mind and just write when time and isolation are at a premium?