Here is the frustrating thing about writing: The space inside which ideas are formed is vast and continually expanding, like the universe, just pure potential. So when you begin to write you take something fairly ephemeral and you pin it down on the page like a dead butterfly. Once it's pinned, the idea becomes more and more limited because this is the nature of ideas, they become static once captured. You give a character life and he or she makes decisions and you paint a few sets and work in a theme and pretty soon you become enamored of these static ideas, people and plots. They start to feel, well if not exactly real, then familiar, like cities you visited with your parents as a child and cherish, though you vaguely remember them. And once that happens, your ability to see them as having unlimited potential disappears. They can't make any movement, say any line of dialog or embark on any adventure, they can only do certain of those things if you intend to make sense, or tell a story or get to a point.

And that is frustrating, because when the idea was gooey and hot in your mind, it was big and wild and alive with possibility. Then it just becomes a thing, an object that can be discarded, criticized and cut from the page, forgotten before it was ever fully born.