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| Not the Author Depositphoto |
“Even when you’re not writing, you’re writing.”
Hmmm, looks at this week’s theme backwards and forwards,
diagrams the sentence, searches for inspiration…
OK, here’s how it works for me, which is all I can speak to:
Writing, or telling stories, is as necessary to me as
breathing is, and has been an integral part of my being since I can remember
(wrote my first book at age 7). I have a vivid imagination.
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| A Muse. Not the proper one for writing perhaps but I like her light hearted spirit |
I’m very superstitious about my Muse and how she works (you
may groan now if you’re a regular reader of this column and have seen me
address this before!). If I think too much about a story, then my brain or my
Muse or whoever/whatever is in charge up there in the Creativity Module says
the story is done. Complete. No need to write that one down. And I NEVER will
be able to.
I used to have a very long commute to the day job. I like to
ponder plot issues while I’m driving, especially with loud music, BUT one day
the commute took an extra long time, I told myself a fabulous Halloween type
scifi tale – it was so good I got goose bumps! – and then…it was done. I never
did write it down in any form at all. Just no creative push to transfer the
story from my brain to the paper. I don’t even remember all the aspects of the
story any more.
I’m not one of those authors who soaks up the people and places
around me and puts them into my stories either. If we’re out for lunch or
dinner I’m not also busily making notes of cute things people have said, or
interesting real life vignettes to stick in my next novel. Doesn’t work for me.
I can only remember a few times when I’ve drawn upon an actual life experience
of my own to put into a book and that was chiefly atmospherics from climbing a
pyramid in Mexico and another time the definite evil I felt emanating from a
statue of the Aztec god of death. Or the general impressions from being
surrounded by the marvels from King Tut’s tomb…but in all those cases, I waited years to pull on those experiences and add them to the plot mix.
On occasion a news story will trigger my imagination and I
take off in a mental riff about it, or enlarge upon it, or grab one aspect to
use in a novel.
Sometimes the first conscious thought in my head in the
morning – even before “feed the cat” – will be the answer to a plot problem, or
a neat twist for the current book I’m writing. Clearly the
Muse/subconscious/creativity module has been working away overnight to come up
with that. This is the only time I guess I could truthfully claim to be “writing
when I wasn’t writing.” But I can’t take any credit for the achievement since I
have no idea what triggers the serendipity and it doesn’t happen every night.
So I guess a part of me is always alert and pondering
creatively, possibly synthesizing a lot of varied inputs that will hit the page
when I do sit down to actually write, but it’s not necessarily a conscious
process.
I do keep a huge folder of plot ideas, clippings, notes etc., for possible stories that came to me at odd moments but you know what? I almost never even open that file. It's a one way funnel. When it's time for me to write a new book, there's always a bright and shiny idea waiting and I can't wait to get to the keyboard to start telling the story.
And in case you somehow missed the new of GABE, my new release this week, plus I love these covers!
