Category: Writing Quotes
As I pondered over what I could delve into for this Writer Wednesday post, I aimlessly searched through quotes on Pinterest. Yes, I’m a shameless pinner of, well, way too many pins. (Pinterest could certainly be a whole other topic of interest.) I skimmed through writing quotes and this one made me sit up with a bit of a laugh. For some reason, it just made me visualize Jack London out in the middle of a wintry forest, club in hand, chasing after a figment of inspiration.
Can something really be designated as inspiration if a person has to club it? I feel as though, yes, one does have to go out into the world and investigate their surroundings in hopes the muses are kind and sprinkle in some inspiration but I don’t know if I could just grab inspiration out of thin air and create. I envy that kind of magical creation, if it does indeed exist.
Some days, I find inspiration in every place I look. My brain becomes a dumping ground of ideas, a gumball machine being filled with ideas for me to chew on or allow to grow stale with age. Most days, however, I run low on inspiration. It gets used up in my adult job or by others trying to find inspiration in their own life. Perhaps I should gift them a club or, at the very least, suggest they find their own club to beat up inspiration.
I need to focus this week on writing a few more chapters for my current WIP. Inspiration has been a bit low. Perhaps it’s time to break out the club. Should I work on my evil eye? Maybe I can intimidate inspiration first, before resulting to further measures. Fingers are crossed!
I vowed after translating the majority of my last novel out of notebooks, journals, napkins, and scraps of paper, I’d never hand write another book. I struggled, at times, to decipher sloppy cursive passages I’d scribbled at the end of a long work day. After translating most of it and learning the joys of trying not to self-edit as I type (something I’ve already done a million and one times to this simple blog post) I felt comfortable writing at length on my laptop. Hearing the clack of the keys as my fingers flew in an attempt to capture all of my wild thoughts became a simple pleasure. A night cap, if you will.
So, why am I drawn to start almost every new project by committing pen to paper? I’m back in the same tortuous loop of decryption! It’s laborious. It almost feels like a waste of writing time. But is it? The muses seem to strike best when I’m conversing with my characters and letting their dialogue flow across the page, as though I’m their therapist taking notes while they speak to me from whatever seat happens to be in the room. I don’t go back and self-edit, it’s more stream of consciousness writing. In some small way, the same feeling I get from my fingers tapping on keys, I get from keeping my cursive skills alive on the page.
I know I’ll be cursing in a couple of days or weeks when I start my conversion to the computer. Hand writing anything seems so analog today in the digital world. Maybe it’ll be a nice keepsake down the road, the scraps of writing from a crazed mind. And maybe it’ll be fuel for a backyard fire. Either way, as the ink flows, the hope is the words will too, and then the click of the keys will sound. All things which equal a happy writer.
I’ll admit it, I’ve been through a writing dry spell lately. At least, novel writing. I still get the same old clips and phrases and prose, which tend to roll out of me when I’ve been inspired by a song or visual stimulation. (Have I mentioned before I have a love of landscape photography?) I have started more than 2 novels and have a notebook full of ideas for more novels. So, why then can’t I settle on one idea? There are numerous excuses I could post here, including many which would explain my blogging hiatus. But, at the end of the day, it’s just that I have not cracked my knuckles and felt the keys fly under my fingers as I get a solid idea put on screen.
It’s been a year since I finished my first novel. A book which took me 5+ years to pluck from the depths of my dreams and believe it was worth telling. My goal was to complete it by the time I turned 35, the bonus would be if I could find representation and/or a publisher to start the ball rolling on getting it out there to readers. 35 is right around the corner… I’ve finished and I had Sunday Submissions set aside and somehow, I submitted to Sunday and the craziness of life. Time to whip myself back into writer shape. It’s time to really focus and get this going because this dream isn’t going to just come on a fluffy pillow presented by some footman from the days of old. Nope, this is an elusive one I’ve got to chase down. The chase is on, my friends.
A little Hemingway today
SH Burgess 