Inspiration at the Wrong Time

For me, it’s regularly like this: I have absolutely no time to write a story and my mind brings up great ideas for new stories like no tomorrow. This happens to me when I have other things to do and most often while, like this month, I’m editing and have to stick to that to get something done.

Perhaps it’s really about that editing. I don’t like it much. I know I have to get the editing done, I have to proofread and to edit my stories before I put them out. No first draft is ever good enough to be seen by anyone else but the author. It’s the part about writing I like least, but it’s still a part of the package and I do it.

This month, I have for the first time tried out the Pomodoro Method for my editing, too, after it already worked great with my writing (making me write much faster than I usually do). It worked with the editing, making sure I got my work done a bit faster and with a bit more focus than I normally have as well. Yet, it didn’t stop me from thinking about new stories I could write the whole time. New stories for characters I’ve already written about, a new set of characters who might become regulars - too much stuff to think about while I was actually doing something else.

Don’t get me wrong - inspiration is something great and I love nothing more than exploring the ideas my mind brings up and figuring out how to turn one set of characters or one initial scene into a novel or novella. However, I’ve had a dearth of inspiration for a bit, then a problem with getting my pinned-down ideas made into first drafts, and now I’m working on my editing and at the same time my mind insists I should write something completely new. I love shiny, new things like the next person. Perhaps I love them more than the next person - I do have an ‘ooh, look, a squirrel’ problem.

Yet having all those ideas in my mind and not being able to really do something about them is horrible. It makes me feel even worse about editing than I already feel about that - and nobody needs that, believe me.

Inspiration often comes at the wrong time, though, because that is what it’s all about. To have inspiration, you need to do something, either something mind-numbing (hello, editing!) or something completely different from writing (which is why I like going for walks or consuming media which differs from my usual stories). Inspiration can happen out of the blue or it can shape up very slowly while you’re not looking. I’ve had cases in which the inspiration came without any warning and I had a half-finished story in my brain. Then there’ve been cases when I felt a story slowly building itself, thinking about this and that and then finding my subconscious had put it all together in a way that made sense.

Once I sit down to write, there’s still a lot of details to figure out, that’s when the discovery writer in me comes into play. Yet, without a general direction in which the story will go, nothing is happening. That is when the inspiration comes in - the general direction. The details come later, I can easily extract them from the basis I have - the question is mostly how to get from this scene I already have in mind to the next one. That’s when I fill up the gaps and make the story fit together as a whole.

Without inspiration, nothing happens, because I do need something to start from, some idea, some character, some scene. Even a single sentence which will be said in a story could be enough, provided it comes to my mind at the right time. Inspiration can be the greatest gift for every artist or other creative person.

Inspiration at the wrong time, however, makes me nervous. It makes my fingers itch to write something while I know that I do have to finish what I’m doing at the moment. It’s especially bad at the moment, since I haven’t really written all that much for about one and a half years, ever since my mother’s death and the changes this brought to my own life. Now, doing editing in a more efficient manner and just having found a way to make my writing more efficient, too, my inspiration is working overtime and pushing things at me like no tomorrow. It is a good sign, I hope, and I do make notes so I might get back to all those ideas, but it doesn’t make editing any easier for me.

Perhaps “The Cases of Benjamin Farrens,” which I finally finished at the end of October (‘finally’ in this case meant after about 15 years and more, but I might do a post about that at some other time), is the reason why my inspiration is back like that. I’ve finally finished a story which has been around me since before I even moved out of my parents’ place. I’ve gotten some stuff written that month (including the first Sherley Holmes story) and gotten back into more concentrated writing (see ‘ooh, look, a squirrel’ on some days). Now my mind hands me more stuff to work on, ignoring that I have to get those things out into the world, too. For that, I need to edit and that is when I get most of my ideas. It’s mad.

I don’t want to complain about getting inspiration, because I like being inspired and I need inspiration to write, so I really can’t do without it. I would just appreciate it, if it came at times when I can really make use of it. Hopefully, it will stay when I’m done editing “John Stanton - Agent of the Crown Vol. 2” and help me write more - including a third volume of John’s adventures, because I already have notes on a first story for that one.