The little idea that could

How many new ideas idly waft through one's brain every day only to waft right back out again? And how many fleeting thoughts are really worth pursuing?

Last week I went looking for a single scene in a book and got sucked into reading the whole thing and then this idea just sort of wandered into my mind, only this time it didn't wander out again. Sometimes it seemed to be sleeping, but then it would reappear, arm in arm with another idea.

I took the idea out and played with it while I was cooking, walking, gardening, and it kept growing and growing and demanding attention like an insistent two-year-old. It's a cute little idea but it was distracting me from projects that needed my full attention.

So I put it away. Maybe I'll pursue it after I'm done with some other things, I told myself. It'll come back to me when I want it.

But as I tried to put it quietly to bed, that cute little idea kept kicking and screaming and pounding its tiny little fists on the floor. Finally it collapsed in a heap, allowing me to get some sleep, only to wake me up by jumping on the bed in the middle of the night.

So after fighting it for nearly a week, I finally took that idea out for a spin today, spending most of the day writing it all down. I'm not sure what the idea is trying to say or to whom, but the writing was exhilarating.

A week from now when I look at today's writing with new eyes, it may look like a sad, sorry, seething mass of solecisms, but today when I rummaged around in the toybox to entertain a clever little idea, that idea ended up entertaining me so much that I didn't want to stop writing.