It doesn’t often happen to me, but yesterday I woke up feeling rather glum. Whenever that happens, I find that the best antidote is to focus on being open to inspiration.
Often, too, the inspiration that comes tells me a lot about something important I’ve been forgetting, which is often at the root of why I’m feeling glum to begin with.
It turns out that yesterday’s spot of down in the dumps was due to my writing – or rather, my not-writing. Because, as it turned out, all the inspiration that flowed to me was related to writing.
First up: a new perspective on my writing. Joe Finder tweeted about James Patterson Inc., an article in the New York Times, which was the first step for me in coming out of the doldrums.
It’s quite a long article, and what fascinated me the most was the reminder that there are two sides to writing: there’s the creative side, and then there’s the business side. And from a business angle, my writing is all about a product. I know it’s not a romantic, creative or artistic way of saying it, but from a business perspective, it’s true. Each novel I write is also a product, and the thing is, if I’m not-writing, well, my writing isn’t exactly going to go anywhere, is it? Because I won’t have any products to put out there into the big wide world.
After reading this article, I suddenly remembered reading about J. Kaye’s new writing blog, 365 Days of Novel Writing at Molly’s blog, My Cozy Book Nook earlier this week. I had scooted over to 365 Days of Novel Writing that day, and enjoyed reading about J. Kaye’s commitment to her writing this year.
And I’m really tickled to see that Molly just posted more extensively about J. Kaye’s writing endeavors, as well as her own, in this Sunday Salon post yesterday.
Putting the James Patterson article together with J. Kaye’s new writing blog, I remembered something else: writing is something that I need to do every day.
It’s not that the month off from writing has been a bust, creativity-wise. I have spent time nearly every day “working on” WAVERLEY, my current WIP, in my mind; I “see” my novels in my mind, like I’m watching a movie. I’ve always done this, and I have to say, it really makes daydreaming fun and productive.
But still, eventually the scenes that I see need to be put into words. And that’s what I’ve been needing to do: the actual act of writing down those words.
And that’s what prompted me to start listening to the audio version of On Writing, by Stephen King; I have read the print version many times, but a good friend of mine sent me the audio version as a gift a while ago.
Last night was the first time I listened to it. It’s read by Stephen King himself, and it turns out he is quite a good narrator. I skipped right to the “writer’s toolbox” section, because I’ve always found myself most inspired by King’s discussion of the tools every writer needs to hone.
So I ended up going to bed inspired, and this morning, the inspiration continued when I discovered this delightful post (again, via Twitter, this time through Debbie Ridpath Ohi) on Johanna Harness’s blog on Magic Note Cards.
I happen to be an office supply store nut – I can never go inside one without coming out relieved of a lot more money than I had intended – and I love index cards. I don’t do any outlining, preferring to write by the seat of my pants, but I’m thinking now that maybe using index cards would be fun for revisions.
You’re asking now – so, did you sit down to write some more of WAVERLEY today, Belle?
Um. Well, if you’re going to put it so bluntly … not as of the writing of this post. BUT the night is still youngish … !
