It's easy to feel clever and thrilled with one's own cleverness. And then you remember that Mozart was composing symphonies when he was in the womb. Sigh.

But for us lesser mortals, it's still tempting to be delighted with some new innovation or solution to a creative problem that we've come up with. For me, right now, it's all about my second book, a collection of short stories called 'The better part of love.'

Since my first book was probably too many different flavors, some of which undoubtedly clashed (but not in a bad way, just not similar styles)- a fact I knew going into it, but I wanted to put out a wide range of what I had done and could do so it was a conscious decision- I wanted the next book to have a very definite shape and cohesive form.

This will lead to both the great advantage of a common theme and also the trap of having everything come off as possibly too similar or lacking in variety. But I think it'll work.

Right now I have seven out of twelve stories done. Done and shifted into the 'completed' sub-folder. Of the stories left to finish up, I've completely changed one, merged two with other stories and added a new one. And there are still three I'm not sure about. Only one of those three will make the final cut, that much I do know.

It is a fascinating and very intuitive/experience driven process. Probably the person closest to me in terms of creative thinking and some common bkgrd experiences is my friend Rick. Both of us started out doing small press writing and design and I think, both of us learned a lot from those days of xeroxing and giant floor lay-outs.

With so much completely new material and topics in the new book, I'm learning in leaps and bounds with everything I do. It's very much a solution driven process and is very similar to acting in the techniques and again 'processes' that I'm using, devising and throwing around.

For each of the stories, I'm using whatever it takes to make the story credible, real or able to fulfill it's purpose. When I started, I had vague ideas for a lot of the titles. It's mostly been a case of title first and then story to fill in but in some cases, I knew the whole flow right from the start. With other stories, I've taken two weak ideas and put them together to come up with one strong one.

I'm also seeking to flex my structural muscles somewhat and experiment with story set-up, boundaries and so on. In some stories this takes the form of lists in the middle of the narrative. In other stories, it's putting in a score-card that's updated as it goes and in another story it's using quotes, clips and fragments of fictional narrative to convey the complex nature of the issues at hand.

And then there's the story I decided to make into ten tiny stories, all connected via ten songs by a fictional recording artist and all using different narrative forms. Why? It just felt right when I thought of it.

I've learned to trust my instincts at this point and I know that if something feels right, then it will work and if something just isn't giving me that creative rush of excitement or enthusiasm, then it most likely won't thrill anyone reading it either.