Finding Inspiration

Whenever I lose focus or need details, a new direction, or a better grasp of what I'm working on, I either head on over to deviantArt and start browsing, or I fire up Explorer and run through the cache of images I've saved to my hard drive, waiting for something to pop out or just gel together.

That's what I had to do with the current NaNo short story earlier today. I knew the protagonist was going to be facing some kind of mutant beast and I even knew the nature of the creature, but I didn't know what the thing looked like, or how it was doing what it was doing. Just like my protagonist.

Yet I knew how everything was supposed to come together and what was going to happen to the protagonist, so this was a small--but rather important--detail, at least from the perspective of "the plot" (ie: what happens). So I fired up dA and I watched a slideshow of my image cache while browsing. And *BAM* Inspiration. A-HA! That's what it is, and that's how it's doing what it's doing!

It all fell into place with evil glee on my part. I realize I will need to make a minor change to the wording/events earlier in the story, but it will make the story stronger.

Other times, I will take a break for a while and go do laundry, dishes, or otherwise clean the house, run to the bank, or just go find a movie to watch. The important thing is that I'm not thinking about the writing or the problem, at least not very seriously--I'm taking a break!--and then things start flowing, with ideas that wouldn't gel or emerge while sitting in front of the screen coming to light.

This is all part of writing. In fact, I find the actual act of writing is the easiest part of writing. Figuring out what to write and making it interesting is the hard part. Dreaming and daydreaming, shaping the story in the mind, crafting the world and making it breathe, before pen ever reaches paper. That's the real work, for me.