The Seed of Inspiration

            Last week was rough for me.  I didn’t have it in me to post anything here on my blog.  Nor did I write anything for my new project.  My inspiration had been crushed by a series of unfortunate events.  Yesterday, I decided to push through it and write the first page of my new novel even though I didn’t know where the story was going.  I did, however, know where it should start.  From this first page, I felt my inspiration blossom, and I wrote the entire first chapter, the seed, the inciting event. 

I read a terrific blog post last week by paranormal author Jami Gold titled Where Do You Get Your Ideas?.  In it she writes, “Story seeds often start small: a single line of dialogue, a single question, a single action.  And somehow our brain takes that nugget of information and turns it into a whole story.”  This is exactly how my last book started, with a question.  I asked myself this question and somehow the answer came through within the text of a 90,000 word novel.

This time, it’s working out to be a bit different.  This time, I’ve started with a single event that I know will spiral into chaos, turmoil, and tragedy.  Still, I have no idea how I’m going to get there, but at least I’ve started, I’ve pushed through that wall that’s been hanging me up for awhile now.

Last time, after asking myself that question, I wrote a complete outline detailing every thought, every movement and action the major characters would take.  That outline gave me immediate structure.  With it in front of me, I could just write, kind of like having a GPS on your car’s dash allows you to just drive, without having to stop and ask for directions or pore over a map. 

Well, I don’t have the luxury of a GPS this time around, but I think my muse left me a sparse trail of breadcrumbs before he took his leave.  I can’t see much of a trail to follow, but at this point, I do see the next crumb.  That’s something, at least.  And I’ll take it.  I’m hoping by the time I’ve found my way to the next crumb and written the second chapter, a new one will have appeared down the path, a new clue that tells me where I should turn. 

In the mean time, I’m letting my seed marinate in the fertile soil that is my brain.  The seed has finally sprouted.  It’s slowly pushing its way through the dense earth toward the surface, towards enlightenment.  I feel the heat of it pulling me upward, as well, out from under the crush.

My friend, Lisa Regan, wrote a hilarious post yesterday called Conversation With My Work In Progress where she describes the point-by-point argument she is having with her nearly finished novel and how she desperately needs its cooperation to see it completed.  Do yourself a favor and check it out.  It’ll brighten your day and put a smile on your face.  And if, like me, you’re struggling with an idea or your current WIP, it’ll let you know that you are not alone.   

Insecure Writer Loses Her Mojo

            This is a difficult day for me.  This post was originally supposed to correlate with Alex J. Cavanaugh’s Insecure Writer's Support Group, to be about the troubles I was having starting my next book, about being motivated to compile an outline, choose a POV, and establish the main characters.  This is a new problem for me.  My first book came to me virtually whole with all the characters in place and their story clear.  All I had to do was listen to the voice whispering over my shoulder and scratch out the outline. 

            I had a few muses along the way, folks who inspired me to write, who gave me visual stimulation to shape my main characters.  I simply kept them in mind as I churned out the words.  And it was easy.  Too easy.  I just wrote everyday for hours on end and after a couple of months, viola, I had an 85,000 word novel.  All the while, I read blog posts about writers who were having a hard time writing their stories and I honestly had a difficult time connecting with that. 

Not so anymore.  I get it.  Completely.  That’s where I am now.  Karma, you might say?  Hmm, perhaps.  

            This is not to say I don’t have a story, because I do.  It’s just not clear like it was the first time.  The plot is murky, at best, and I have no muse, no one that inspires me to develop my main character, the protagonist.  And the saddest part for me is that one of the men I used as a muse for my last book’s main character, Skylar, has just died.  He was a real man, young and vital, and now he is gone.  I didn’t know this particular muse personally.  He was an actor whose character work I found stimulating.  His face, or a composite of his and one other’s, played like a movie in my head as I wrote and revised my book.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to put this book behind me as I query for an agent and prepare to move on to my next project, but the death of my old muse feels like a nail in some proverbial coffin, or an omen, perhaps.  Today was the day I was going to start brainstorming in earnest, but now, it seems, his death has sapped my energy.  In some way, it’s like a death knell for my first novel.  How do I get inspired to move on when it feels like an old friend has passed?

No, I’m not the stalker type.  This man was a character to me.  But I am strongly linked to my book’s characters, so this man’s death feels terribly real to me, like my own protagonist has somehow died even though I wrote a happy ending for him.  What makes this harder still is that this man died of cancer, a normally highly curable cancer, one that a special and dear friend has had to battle in recent years.  This correlation comes a little too close to home for me and does touch me personally.  So now I’m sad and scared.  Therefore, no writing for me today, other than this post, that is. 

Though I know it won’t alleviate my anxiety, I was hoping that writing this would help purge my melancholy, help me move on, get over the shock that a strong, young man in the pinnacle of health, at the height of his career, can be brought down in a mere eighteen months.  It hasn’t.  I’m sad that life is so fragile.  Funny, I got off writing just this kind of thing in my novel, but in reality, it just sucks.  But I’ll move on, because that’s what we humans do, right?  We move on.

In the mean time, this very insecure writer has read a helpful post, also by the lovely Alex Cavanaugh, who recently wrote a piece as a guest on Elizabeth Mueller’s blog called Writing the Second Book.  Though his article focused more on writing a sequel, he gives some great tips for getting started on a second novel.  Just in the nick of time for me it seems!  You’re kind of like a guardian angel for me today, Alex.  Thanks for that. 

So, what about you?  Have any of you written a second book?  How was it different from your first one?  Did you have trouble starting?  Any tips?  And have any of you ever lost your mojo, or your muse, like I have?  How do I find it again?