Inspiration

Some people say that the hardest part of writing is editing, some plotting. For others it's just plain applying ass to chair. But for me, the toughest step has always been the first: finding your inspiration. That singular idea you can't ignore, that starts as a tickle in the back of your mind and becomes an opus in the space of your walk home. Exciting times, and terrifying too. Is it a stupid idea? Unoriginal? Will my friends and family think I'm insane/boring/ripping off Twilight?

Inspiration is a lot like love. Once you're about 20K words in, you and your manuscript get comfortable with each other. Like any relationship, you fight sometimes, go without talking for days on end, pass lazy afternoons in front of the TV. But the beginning is complete infatuation. It still makes my heart pound to remember those first dizzying weeks of inspiration. I remember feeling out of breath and slightly queasy, staring for hours on end at two pages of ideas in single-spaced text and the cursor blink blink blinking at the end, like it's saying "Yeah? What next?"

Inspiration can come from anywhere: dreams, places, people, even other books (as long as you're not too inspired by them, ha). I've been thinking a lot about this lately - about how bad things, hard times, strange experiences can be the best inspiration - so over the next week, I'd like to spend some time thinking about where ideas come from.

P.S. I'll be blogging all this from China! Whoo!