It feels like forever ago since I finished my first book Confessions of a Teenage Writer and as proud as I am of it, I have very little hope of getting this one published. However, if your interested in reading a lot of the rest of it check it out on my old and sadly dead wattpad here.
This book is all about writing and my struggles and experiences with it. It actually wasn’t that long ago that I finished it, but now that I look back on it there are so many things I wish to change, but what never changes is the pride. I promised myself to finish the first draft of it before I got out of high school and I did and now after leaving it alone for so long, I know I have a lot of work to do to polish it.
However, I wanted to share one of my favorite chapters because it affects me every single day….
Shower Ideas
Why is it that you get your best ideas in the one place you can’t write them down? The shower.
It is like this sickness that you can never get rid of. Every time you get under the drops of the water your mind becomes plagued with so many ideas it is ridiculous. You wish that you had a waterproof pen and paper so that you could write them all down. Especially when you know that by the time you get out of the shower the ideas turn into a big pile of forgotten dust.
You may be able to piece together a few pieces of the puzzle from the dust, but never the full picture and that infuriates you. You feel as that no matter what those ideas are meant to slip through your mind like sand through your fingers. The more you think that you remember them the more that the ideas slip away until even the dust dissipates into nothingness.
You wish that there could be some way to take all the ideas that come to you from the watery place that is your shower and put them in a container that will keep them forever safe so that you may not forget them. I mean technology has progressed so quickly these days that someone should have come up with a waterproof journal right?
The worst is when you are in the shower and you have been through a lot of writers block that you haven’t been able to get out of and suddenly you have a breakthrough and it just so happens to be in the one place you can’t write it down.
Once you step out the ideas seem to vanish into thin air and you feel like cookie monster in a world were no cookies exist.
Getting ideas in the shower is a conundrum that I know will plague me for as long as I live. I am thinking of resorting to taking baths and having a notebook at the ready for the inevitable flow of ideas that will ensue as soon as I step inside my shower.
I can imagine how many ideas that I could write if I was in the shower 24 hours at a time. I would probably be able to start and finish an entire novel that way. I have also noticed that in the shower ideas come to you in spitfires. They are so rapid and so inspiring that I sometimes wonder how those ideas even come to my head.
The only time I get extremely happy about these showery ideas is when I can get them to stay in my forgetful brain long enough that I get to write them down. When that happens I feel like doing a minnie victory dance. In fact, I have on occasion, done those victory dances when I am blessed with the honor of remembering an idea.
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Love your shower, Write things down, and get a waterproof journal.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this post. Even this chapter of my book feels like it needs a lot of work, but still I feel a lot of love in my heart for my little book baby. Let me know your thoughts and if you have any suggestions or ideas about what to do with the book!
*disclaimer* I’m pretty sure I made the cover with a copyright image. This cover is only temporary and I hope to have a new one made in the future. Let me know if you know of anyone who could help me with it.
-Till next time!
Hey, I’m in the middle of writing an essay for uni titled “why do people collect hard copy books in a world of digital publishing” and I’ve created a survey to help me collect some key data to back up my thoughts and ideas, I would love if you took 5 minutes to answer them ❤ https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/7D2KLMV
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I will be happy to do that!
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thank you so much ❤
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I liked this chapter! And I am also on Wattpad (I always forget to update lol). But I think you could easily get back to it.
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My problem with wattpad is that I feel like I can never continue a story the way I want to and I never update often enough. I always look back on a chapter and want to change it or change the direction of the story and with wattpad sometimes you can’t really do that.
Maybe once I have a finished work I think would do well on there I will come back to writing on it, but as of right now it never works out right for me.
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Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, I also feel a little out of control while writing; ideas just hit me that I hadn’t come up with. And my updates are very slow. Well, I do edit my chapters a lot; then I republish them, though I add an author’s note about it.
And yeah, if you have a finished story, that may work!
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I totally agree with you – Some of the best ideas have come to me in the shower. Another place, in my experience, is in the car while driving! My latest idea for a new novel came to me as I stuck in traffic because the tunnel was blocked, and I had no paper or working pen in my car! In that instance, I committed everything to memory and remembered I had a legal pad at my then-fiance’s house. Once the tunnel cleared, I drove straight there and wrote furiously for 20 minutes!
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I don’t drive just yet I’m a bit of a scaredy cat, but I definitely know the feeling. It’s great that you kept the idea in your head though! That’s the best feeling in the world!
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Very true! I always get my best ideas in the shower as well. Also right before I go to sleep, which sucks because I always forget them the next morning.
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I hate it so much, but it always happens! I wish it didn’t happen as much as it always does
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It is a pain that plagues so many people. I wish that didn’t happen as often as it did.
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Hahaha this is so true! But you know, someone DID come up with a waterproof notebook and pen. You basically attach it to your shower wall and you can write in it while in the shower. Because a very clever person realized this was a necessity so they invented it and started selling it! I never wanted something so absolutely random but also absolutely relevant in my entire life XD
All of this to say I can relate 😛 And maybe get one of those? I’m not sure how well they work but it’s worth a try 🙂 Need to save those brilliant ideas!
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That’s really cool! I need one of those in my life! That would be so amazingly helpful for me. Thanks for letting me know! 😊
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The shower has always been my prime idea place, too. Like Sophie The Stark said above, waterproof notepads and pens are totally a thing! I had to get some before I went to study tropical ecology in Costa Rica, in case it rained on any of our field trips! I still have several of the mini-notebooks lying around, but the pens are probably lost for all eternity, as pens of any sort inevitably are.
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That’s amazing! It’s really cool that you’ve actually used them and In Costa Rica no less! That must have been so useful.
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I think you should definitely revisit your book!
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Thank you! I will see what I can do with it in the future.
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