What do you do when you get an idea?
Coming to terms with moments of inspiration.
While shopping in Lincoln yesterday, three disparate events — seeing something, hearing something, thinking something — came together while waiting for the train home and became something else entirely. An idea. From nowhere — and certainly without trying! — dots were joined, relationships appeared, metaphorical lines were sketched; suddenly I was faced with a notion that was undoubtedly more significant than its constituent parts.
Possibly a topic for a new piece of long-form fiction.
But what do you do with an idea when it hits you like that? In my case I made a few notes on my phone and then, once back at my computer, a few more — along with a kind of structure within which the idea could be developed.
Then — and this is important in my process — nothing.
Having had the idea — and having made certain that I have sufficient notes not to ‘lose’ it — I simply wait. I allow it to gestate. Even as I sit here not working on it, not consciously thinking about it, I know there is a background process underway where my brain is teasing at threads, identifying more dots — then potentially starting to join them together.
At some point (it could be tomorrow, next week, in a month’s time) the background process will finish and I’ll be compelled to start a more intense phase of thinking, planning, drawing lines. I already know that building character profiles will be an early activity (it will be that kind of narrative), but I’ll only do so when the time is right. Hopefully.
Of course the background process may fizzle out, the idea turn out to be vapour, something that’s impossible to work with and which has no value for me. And that’s perfectly okay. I suspect we each have thousands of ideas which all go the same way, the vast majority of them totally unrecognised.
And as if in support of my process, my theory, sadly I can point to many examples of unfinished projects which over the years have died a painful death in part because I didn’t give them time enough to mature i.e. I forced myself to work on them before I should have.
Sounds a bit ‘hippy’? Maybe so — but that’s years of writing experience, my writing experience, talking.
What do you do when you get a flash of inspiration? How do you handle it?
On a different subject — but one which is also related to inspiration and the finding and harvesting of ideas — I have been busy fleshing out my schedule for 2025. [For those of you who have been following along, you’ll recognise how important this was for me given I had to abort a March trip to Scotland because of ill health.]
So:
May: week-long writers’ retreat
June: week in Somerset visiting family and friends
July: a few days in Lancashire with my nearest and dearest
September: a week on Skye
October: a short break in London?
November: another week-long retreat?
Now doesn’t that look better than an empty diary! Plus, over that period, edits 5 and 6 of a new novel which may see the light of day towards the end of the year.
Oh yes. And maybe I’ll be starting work on that new project, the genesis of which inspired this post..!
This reminds me of John Cleese’s Cheerful Guide to Creativity. I nodded in agreement to both. Seeds need to settle, to take root before they sprout. Then there is that exhilarating moment when you sit with your keyboard and your fingers just reveal…
If it's poetry, I tend to try to get right to work. I think poems work that way for me. More "of the moment." Prose, well sometimes it take an incubation time. And within that time, sometimes, the idea turn out to be not so great. Next, please. :)