Being scatterbrained is half of the creative equation for intuitive INFP writers.

If you have ever had a nagging suspicion that you are scatterbrained, you are probably a highly creative writer.

You never run out of ideas. You love opening new doors. You love asking questions. There’s so much to discover, so much to learn!

But this same amazing part of you that makes you so good with coming up with ideas also makes it hard to choose.

As highly creative writers, we can feel paralyzed at the thought of shutting down our options.

As a highly intuitive writer, you might feel paralyzed about making the best choice. Or you might have generated so many different branches of ideas that now, you feel confused about how to use them.

They get tangled up in your mind, and you feel overwhelmed at the thought of sorting and sifting through them.

This is how I felt for a long time in my life, both as an intuitive INFP writer and just as a person.

It was easy to open things, and hard to close them down.

Was there something wrong with me?

Over time, I realized that my nagging suspicion that there was something wrong with me wasn’t true. My brain was just wired differently.

I was good at Divergent Thinking, creative thinking that follows many lines of thought and tends to come up with new ideas & solutions.

An endless opening up of new possibilities was Divergent Thinking in action. If you have ever thought you were scatterbrained or all-over-the-place, you are probably a divergent thinker too.

And it’s great to be one!

Often, when people are discussing creativity and what it takes to be creative, they are talking about people like us, people who can see new possibilities everywhere and who can pull out new ideas at the drop of a hat.

But divergent thinking is only one side of creating something in the real world.

Once we have thought of different possibilities, then, we have to make choices. After all, we can’t make all the things we’ve thought of all at once.

So, writing a book is not only about coming up with new and exciting possibilities, it’s also about choosing from these possibilities so you can actually make something.

Writing a book needs BOTH divergent and convergent thinking.

We need to be able to explore our beautiful ideas and let them take us in different directions. But then, at some point, we need to start choosing and closing things down.

This is what I have learned in my journey as a writer.

Creating something is as much about limiting possibilities as it is about opening them.

This summer, I interviewed writers for my upcoming book for writers. (I wrote about it here.) And it was so interesting to have several conversations in which we talked about how having limitations actually helps us accomplish things.

To manifest, we have to let go of some possibilities.

I know that doesn’t sound like fun. It didn’t sound fun to me when it first started dawning on me many years ago that the creative equation looked like Opening Up New Possibilities, and then, Choosing and Closing Them Down.

The first part felt fun. The second felt like work.

It also felt HARD and risky.

What if I made the wrong choice? What if I had bad judgment and made something terrible? How awful I would feel!

But to be creative, I had to accept these fears, this creative risk. I also had to accept that I needed to make choices, that writing a book was not only about discovery, it was also about making choices.

So, if you have ever thought of yourself as someone who starts too many things, I hope you see how much creative power that has. Not everyone can think like this. Not everyone has these ideas multiplying in their heads.

This idea-generation is the first step to making anything.

The trick is to not get stuck here, in an endless loop of idea-generating, in creating multiple idea babies. The next step is to start making choices about what you want to bring into this world and start giving it form.

I know that can feel vulnerable and dangerous, but the other choice is the regret of becoming “an echo upon echo of possibilities.”

The other choice is regret.

And you deserve better than that.

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