The Cycle Continues
It’s the writer circle of life…Write book…submit book…angst about book…get swarmed by LEGIONS of flipping doubt crows. Then the voices start talking to you. You know, the voices of the characters for your next MS.
What? Don’t tell me they don’t talk to you. They do, right? It’s not just me…RIGHT??? (it gives me Cathy caliber sweat drops, I tell you!!)
Ahem.
Truly though, some people call those voices ‘a need for medication’ I call them ‘inspiration’ and inspiration is a good thing.
Inspiration is the thing that keeps you going even when you do doubt yourself. It’s the thing that makes you press on after getting rejections. Inspiration can also be a pain because it is possible to have too much of it. And then you want to start the first page of 956 MSs and not finish any of them. And that gets you precisely nowhere because no publisher I can think of wants to buy 956 page ones. :/
So we want inspiration…yes we do. And where does it come from? Everywhere. TV shows, movies, books, songs, the news, the double rainbow you spotted outside your bedroom window (yes, that joke will die someday but NOT YET).
Part of the inspiration for my April UK release came from His Girl Friday. Not from the plot, but from the dialogue. The way the characters spoke to each other. The fast paced, never-miss-a-beat interactions and killer comebacks and quips.
The other piece of inspiration came when I saw, in my head, this woman who was perfectly coiffed and polished, with berry colored lipstick and a matching manicure and I thought…some guy really needs to come and mess with her perfectly ordered existence.
And that was the start of Gage and Lily. Small little impressions, and yet they bloomed into a full fledged book.
And as for controlling the inspiration surge? It’s a must, it really is. It’s part of that ‘discipline’ thing I talk about all the time. If you don’t like listening me talk about it…imagine Andy Whitfield in his gladiator garb telling you to behave. :}
The best piece of advice I can give is write a synopsis/outline/character sheet and put it in a file for ideas to be used later. (Some of the authors on twitter were talking about how nothing kills their love for a new idea better than having to write a synopsis for it…so it could work in that respect too! LOL)
Something I used to do, but don’t much anymore, is if I was having a total block on my main MS, I would pull up my side project and fiddle with it. That way there was no excuse for not writing during a writing time. (deadlines have made this impractical, so I tend to just slog my way through the MS I’m ‘supposed’ to be working on).
So that’s a little bit on taming inspiration…and the cycle of being a writer. It’s noisy in a writer’s head, isn’t it!?
How do you tame/get inspiration?
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Ummm…will there be um “consequences” if I don’t. Just asking.
How to I tame/get inspiration? At this point in time I’m kinda sucking in the taming/getting inspired department but I’m working on it.
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Emma, O_O serious consequence. Mhmm. Hope the inspiration stuff all sorts out for you!
I need to listen to Andy. It’s so tempting to wander off to play with another story when one gets tricky. Especially that brand new idea. It’s all nice and shiny and the rush of starting something new makes any obstacles look manageable. But that discipline is what leads to finished projects. Good finished projects. They don’t just happen.
Sadly, it’s true! Yes, listen to Andy…he is wise and his gaze is preternaturally piercing. O_O
I used to start another project whenever I got stuck on my current MS. Resulting in lots of first chapters, first three chapters,etc. I finally learned that those other “shiny” ideas soon become just as hard as the current MS once I reached about pg 50. That’s when I learned to stick with one.
So true, Anne! It all seems shiny at first…and who doesn’t love the lure of a forbidden MS? But in the long run, it doesn’t help. It’s about finishing, and cultivating the discipline to finish even when the burning inspiration does a disappearing act.
I have this groovy ‘Ideas” folder and I write out a synopsis for the entire story (which are getting more detailed now I know the questions to ask) and then once I finish one story I can then trawl through the folder and pick the one that looks the most exciting.
I can’t listen to Andy. I look at him and everything else goes out the window. He could be telling me my pants were on fire and I’d still have that glazed enraptured look on my face and then he’d end up getting all huffy and there’s nothing sadder than a gladiator in a huff!