You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
- Jack London
Inspiration doesn't keep to a schedule in my house. It doesn't visit regularly or even call ahead to alert me when it's coming. When it does arrive, always unannounced, I never know if it will stay a few hours or a few weeks. Sometimes it doesn't call for days on end. These are the days when I think about this quote. I go to the closet in my office and dig out my assortment of maces and baseball bats.
Okay, that's not entirely true. I keep my hunting weapons on the book shelf behind my desk. Instead of sticks and clubs though, my weapons of choice for hunting inspiration - surprise, surprise - are special books. Not ordinary books, but journals. I've been keeping them for years for just such occasions.
In these journals I've recorded all the places where inspiration has appeared to me in the past. I allow in them a certain freedom that I generally deny myself in my story writing. Among these pages I give Chaos free reign. The journals hold everything imaginable, from the mundane day to day things to sketches, lists and story notions. There is no order and I make no attempts to impose any. Thoughts fall upon the pages just as they emerge from my mind. Anything I find interesting or strange or helpful, I record in these books. As a result, I have yet to come back from a hunting expedition empty handed.
Currently I have six journals. I did make an attempt once to segregate the contents for easier retrieval, but it failed miserably and I've never tried it again. What I record in each book tends to have much more to do with which one is handiest when a thought occurs to me than putting the thought into a specific place or volume.
One stays by the bed, most of the time. Another is carried with me whenever I go anywhere. One stays on the floor under my recliner. Yet another wanders around the house almost as much as I do. The other two no longer have blank pages, and therefore can almost always be found in my office, on the shelf behind my desk. (On the same shelf, there are also three completely blank books for future use. I buy them ahead so that I have them on hand for occasions when I deserve a reward.)
While I don't impose order, I do try to date the entries and give them headings. Currently the pages contain heading like:
List
Quote to Remember
Story Notion
Science Fact
Craft Note
Journal Entry
Plot Line Idea
Character Profile
Blog Post Idea
Strange Thought
This is just a partial list. The contents evolve just as my thoughts do.
While keeping a journal is nothing new, especially for a writer, I can't think of a single thing that has helped improve my writing more than these volumes. They balance out the days when I have a thousand ideas with the days I have none at all.
The point of this Post?
Know that there are days when writing will be easy and days when it will not. Prepare for those days. Keep a few clubs close at hand.
- Jack London
Inspiration doesn't keep to a schedule in my house. It doesn't visit regularly or even call ahead to alert me when it's coming. When it does arrive, always unannounced, I never know if it will stay a few hours or a few weeks. Sometimes it doesn't call for days on end. These are the days when I think about this quote. I go to the closet in my office and dig out my assortment of maces and baseball bats.
Okay, that's not entirely true. I keep my hunting weapons on the book shelf behind my desk. Instead of sticks and clubs though, my weapons of choice for hunting inspiration - surprise, surprise - are special books. Not ordinary books, but journals. I've been keeping them for years for just such occasions.
In these journals I've recorded all the places where inspiration has appeared to me in the past. I allow in them a certain freedom that I generally deny myself in my story writing. Among these pages I give Chaos free reign. The journals hold everything imaginable, from the mundane day to day things to sketches, lists and story notions. There is no order and I make no attempts to impose any. Thoughts fall upon the pages just as they emerge from my mind. Anything I find interesting or strange or helpful, I record in these books. As a result, I have yet to come back from a hunting expedition empty handed.
Currently I have six journals. I did make an attempt once to segregate the contents for easier retrieval, but it failed miserably and I've never tried it again. What I record in each book tends to have much more to do with which one is handiest when a thought occurs to me than putting the thought into a specific place or volume.
One stays by the bed, most of the time. Another is carried with me whenever I go anywhere. One stays on the floor under my recliner. Yet another wanders around the house almost as much as I do. The other two no longer have blank pages, and therefore can almost always be found in my office, on the shelf behind my desk. (On the same shelf, there are also three completely blank books for future use. I buy them ahead so that I have them on hand for occasions when I deserve a reward.)
While I don't impose order, I do try to date the entries and give them headings. Currently the pages contain heading like:
List
Quote to Remember
Story Notion
Science Fact
Craft Note
Journal Entry
Plot Line Idea
Character Profile
Blog Post Idea
Strange Thought
This is just a partial list. The contents evolve just as my thoughts do.
While keeping a journal is nothing new, especially for a writer, I can't think of a single thing that has helped improve my writing more than these volumes. They balance out the days when I have a thousand ideas with the days I have none at all.
The point of this Post?
Know that there are days when writing will be easy and days when it will not. Prepare for those days. Keep a few clubs close at hand.
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