Here comes inspiration

 Inspiration can strike writers at any time, in any place.

As songsmith Paul Williams once sang, here comes inspiration, walking through the door.

Before I expand on that, let me just repeat something I've said before. Inspiration is NOT reclining in a chaise longue awaiting the angel's kiss upon your brow. Inspiration is nothing more than the spark of the first flame of a fire that might - might - one day erupt into a story, book, screenplay, play, shopping list, whatever. 

That takes application and, sometimes, perspiration.

I have a number of books I have been inspired to write, have begun and then at some point stopped not because of that mythical malaise writer's block but because I realised I was writing the wrong thing. That spark, the inspiration, was a false prophet and I eventually saw it for what it was.

The thing is, I never know it's a lying, no good rascal until I have a good few thousands words down.

Last night I watched a performance by my partner, the lovely Beatrice (I am contractually obligated to call her that). She's a singer, you know, and a darn good one.

Well, it was while I was ostensibly keeping an eye on sound levels and making myself look very busy that an idea for a book came to me. Or at least part of a book. I can't tell you what it is because then I would have to deploy a highly-trained team of ninjas to silence you. 

(Side Note: Autocorrect changed highly-trained to highway-rained. I mean - what?)

Yes, at the moment it is but a mere germ of an idea but it's there and it really was generated by listening to Beatrice and watching the audience. I didn't expect it but that's how inspiration works. It just walks through the door, or, in this case, was carried on the notes of songs wonderfully sung. 

Unfortunately, I am hip-deep in my second historical thriller, I have another to write after that and a further two Rebecca Connolly novels. And all before Christmas!

I'm lying, of course.

It's next Easter.

I'm still lying.

I could go into politics.

The thing is, I really, really, REALLY want to pursue this idea to see where it goes but it will have to sit on the far back burner for now, along with other notions, including a one man play based on one of my non-fiction books and - wait for it - a musical! No, I can't sing or play an instrument or read or write music but I can string words one after the other in some semblance of order and have a yen to put something together.

I'm the same with reading. I can be into something, might even be enjoying it, but then another title comes my way and I am desperate to dive into it, too. 

TV shows, too. I can be enjoying a series (or, as I've written before, finding it way too long but sticking with it to see how it ends) when another one, all shiny and bright, begins to flicker in the corner of my screen and I think I'll just have a wee taste and the next thing you know I'm immersed in that and the other one is left to languish so long that I've forgotten what it was all about. 

A bit like that last sentence.

I'm beginning to think I may have a problem.

Anyway, back to inspiration and the mercurial nature thereof. I never sweat where my next idea is coming from because I know that it will present itself at the proper time. At the moment I am quite replete with story ideas and have no need to go searching, thank you very much.

If only they wouldn't come looking for me!

The rollercoaster continues

 I agree with Rick. Here we are in another  bleeping lockdown, only a couple of months after our hopes were soaring high because vaccines were arriving and our liberation was near, along with the arrival of spring. As an aside, we Canadians relate everything to the season and the weather. Warm, sunny, deluge, freezing, blizzard; nothing is ever the same old same old. Right now we are in the midst of a gorgeous, sunny, summer-like heat wave. The tulips are blooming, when in other years dirty traces of snow might still linger in the shady parts of the yard.

This weather should be enough to energize and lift the spirits, but instead this recent crushing lockdown has made us all slightly unhinged. People are doing nutty things like trashing businesses in Old Montreal, already struggling from lockdowns. Driving donuts inside rings of fire created by pouring gasoline in a circle in an empty parking lot. Holding huge, maskless beer parties in public parks in normally well-behaved Ottawa.

As writers, as observers and commentators of human nature, this should all be fascinating stuff. We kill people for a living, for heaven's sake. What's a flaming donut or maskless beer party? But while we're living through it, this mass hysteria is pretty scary stuff. The best we can do as writers is file it away in that mental file marked "random story ideas" and try to cling to our sanity. As many writers have already noted, keeping our focus and our energy in these times is exhausting. I am writing in fits and starts, finding it difficult to get any purchase on the crumbling ground of my concentration. 

Maybe it would be easier if I were a plotter. It seems to me that's a more methodical way to write, because you proceed almost point-form from one scene and stepping stone to the next. Once you have the structure and the essence, there is a built-in scaffolding to hang on to and keep your focus. I'd like to know from plotters whether this is a help to this pandemic writing challenge.

Unfortunately I'm mostly a pantser. I don't know the overall story or what's coming next or where I should end up. This scaffold-free creativity demands lots of energy, concentration, and inspiration. The muse doesn't need to be here all the time, because once I hit on a new idea to move the story forward, I happily run with the idea until it's done. But the muse needs to make frequent visits. Pandemic lassitude saps the creative mind of energy. It takes a lot of determination to force myself to sit in the chair and stare at the page, willing the next brilliant idea to flit in. It's so much easier to walk the dogs or browse Facebook. I haven't resorted to mopping the floors yet, but this morning I did vacuum them. Yikes.

Because this is my twentieth book, I do know that it will get written, that at some point as the deadline approaches, the required amount of panic and frustration will kick in to give me the energy I need. With each book, there has always been a time when I thought I didn't have an idea left in my head and the book was going to fall flat on its face. Somehow, by the end of the teeth gnashing, hair pulling, massaging and rewriting, a passably good book emerges. And so it will this time.