What to do with your newborn creative idea

Dear friends,

It was born a couple of weeks ago: the idea for a new novel. I was sitting at my kitchen table, chatting with a couple of friends when I felt it appear. It wasn’t a dramatic moment, but it was a very clear one. It rustled.

“Ah,” I thought. “It’s arrived.”

I knew almost nothing about this newborn, though, because I couldn’t see it yet. It was born in the shed.

The shed

I have a shed inside me where my creativity lives. It sits in the backyard of my self; it’s a bit ramshackle, built of wood and corrugated iron and probably put together by whoever lived here last. You might have something similar, although yours might be more like a theme park, a theater, or a cave in a rock face.

I value my shed very highly, but I’ve never been inside it. I just recognize the rustlings.

Photo by Kevin Jarrett on Unsplash

Here’s what it feels like: suddenly, something is moving around somewhere inside me. It feels as though parts of my body are very slightly displaced by it. But because the idea…