Pulling the Pieces Together

You ever get the feeling where you're looking for something and you know it's there somewhere but you can't quite get your hands on it but instead keep grabbing a similar yet not quite right thing? (I know there were a lot of conjunctions in that sentence, but that was the only way I could really describe my thought process at the moment.)

It's sort of how I feel right now about ideas.

See, I know I don't have the right to be getting distracted by pretty ideas. I'm working on The Thief Book right now, and I need to focus on that and not loose focus. Especially not to toss that focus over onto some gossamer whisper and breath of an idea.

But that's what's toying with me right now, the whisp of an idea.

I don't know quite what set it off, but somehow my mind came to the conclusion that it could fit together these scraps of idea that I had lying around and turn them into a full idea. Seriously, I don't know what brought this on, but now my mental self is scavenging around my head for these bits and pieces that I know are in there somewhere. The only problem is, I haven't the foggiest where I left them.

I do, however, keep finding other scraps. Ones that are similar to the ones I want but not quite. It's like looking for a pair of black high heels. (Sorry, male readers, I'm about to embark on an analogy to something you've probably never experienced, though probably witnessed.) Most girls, I've discovered, own more than one pair of black high heels. And, lots of girls, I've discovered, own shoes that, to me, look a lot alike. (But that's probably because I'm not a shoe person.)

Anyway, when you're looking for a pair of black shoes and keep finding the wrong pair of black shoes, the close but no cigar sort of black shoes. It's a little frustrating, and it's a tad confusing, if you're uncovering a bunch of stuff you didn't know was also down there, or up there, or wherever you keep your shoes.

I'm reverting from the shoe analogy and the scraps of cloth analogy to the actual world. I'm still sort of kicking this idea around in my mind. I want to get it into something a little more cohesive and ... congealed is really the only word to describe this mental picture, but I doubt it's a pretty visual in anyone else's mind. Anyway, I'm trying to pull the whole deal together in my mind before I put it down in the newly formed Big Book of Ideas. (Okay, since it's newly formed, it's just the Average Sized -- okay Teeny Tiny -- Book of Ideas.)

How do you pull your ideas together? Do you ever have a problem trying to find an idea you have a while ago? What's your though process like?