Inside a writer’s mind is pure, unfiltered chaos.

Or at least, that’s what my mind is like 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There’s always something constantly churning there, and often times there’s a small part of my brain saying “Get out!” because I just need to turn off for a few minutes to hold on to a little bit of sanity.

Currently, I have four novels going. Yes, four. One is literally teetering on the edge of being finished and going into the editing process, another is trailing not too far behind it and the other two are about a smidge over half-way away from being done. Then what happens the other day? A fifth story starts to take bloom in my head. I actually stood in front of the mirror and asked myself “Are you freaking serious?! FOUR is enough right now!”

But I couldn’t stop myself. Sitting out in my chair, soaking up the sun at the beach, trying desperately to unplug from everything (because I was on vacation)… out came the iPad. I frantically began the tap-tap-tapping of pounding out some random part of that fifth story. Ten pages in a matter of minutes. Sure it’s rough. Sure it’s probably smack dab in the middle of the story. But, that’s how I write. Random scenes come to me and I literally panic, reach for whatever I have handy (I’ve typed out pages and pages on my smartphone before, I’ve been so desperate), and spill it all out before I lose it. Then, I piece it all together, connecting everything so it flows coherently.

There are times when ideas come to me so quickly, at the most inopportune times, that I feel like plowing over whoever is in my way of getting near a pen and paper, a computer or just about anything so I can get it out.

Ever gotten the shakes from an idea? I have. I’ve sprinted up my walkway, into my house and dive bombed my lap top before.

Sometimes the mind is a great place, staying steadily focused on weaving and creating that one particular story. On a roll once, I pounded out 200 glorious pages of a story I still have in high faith as being “The One” (as in the one my head actually lets me finish entirely, instead of leaving it hanging 10 pages shy of being done because I just can’t come up with an ending). 200 pages, then BOOM, my brain shut off.

I’m that over-creative writer that can’t think of something real, as in a part of my own life, without being all “Oh, hey, that could totally be a story. Sure, a Lifetime Movie Network or made-for-TV story, but still a story.” I’ve started, stopped, ripped up and thrown out who knows how many stories pertaining to parts of my life. In almost 30 years, I’ve done a lot of living, experienced a lot of things, and have even been told that writing it all out would be an amazing idea. Share my story.

The fact that I’m a private person ruins that.

So instead, I weave parts of me into my characters. Parts of my life become story lines. Secondary characters take shape from parts of people in my own life.

… and here we go, the gears are spinning on that story that’s nearly finished. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, or this blog post hanging like I’ve done with so many other pieces of writing…

Adiós.