My Work-In-Progress should have about 4,000 more words than it does, but I skipped two days in a row. Why? I could blame it on writer's block, but lets lay the blame where it belongs: laziness. Rather than face the challenge before me (a gaping hole in the plot and a scene that required that hole be patched before proceeding), I simply took a break and thought "inspiration will come."
Well, it didn't. What came instead was a desire to write, though I had nothing in my head to write about. I opened my file and expected to stare at a blank screen. I re-read what I wrote two days before until it dawned on me. I remembered a minor character and had him patch the hole for me.
As ideas go, good ones are hard to come by, and waiting for inspiration to strike is not enough. Waiting out writer's block is like the stork of Bad Ideas. It will come to you in the middle of the night bearing in its beak a half-formed thought that seems decent at first, but doesn't actually make sense. These sudden bursts of inspiration will not fill your plot holes. Their only purpose is to wake your spouse when you turn on the light to jot them down in your journal entitled "Ideas I will never use." I'm not sure if this technique works for anyone, and if it does, feel free to rant in the comments, but I just can't sit around and take extended breaks from my WIP while I wait for an inspiration. Inspiration just doesn't work like that.
When I walk away from my novel feeling stuck, I may get an idea. That idea may be about my book, or it may be an idea for an entirely different book. I can't count how many half-written manuscripts I've abandoned because when I felt stuck, an inspiration struck me and I cheated on my WIP with an unrelated project (usually one that was not as good as the original).
The best ideas are formed during the writing process, in my experience, as I am fleshing out characters. They come from ignoring the writer's block and having a random character pop open a door and say hello. From skipping scenes and writing the ending, and from simply powering through the scene at hand and seeing where I end up.
When I started writing my current Work-In-Progress, Allister Blacknall was nothing more than an evil warlock seeking fortune. He was the driving force for the story, but he just didn't make sense. It was frustrating and I could have given up many times. But while I wrote, he developed into a murderous ex-government spy turned fugitive, seeking not riches but arcane knowledge, and a means to escape his inevitable capture. His character has spawned two other sub-villains, and a host of supporting characters to fill the driving force roles.
None of this happened while waiting for inspiration to strike, but while I was striking inspiration. I hope that next time I decide to take a day off, I re-read this and smack myself. That is certainly *striking* inspiration ba dum pshhh!
(.....Sorry)
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