When inspiration strikes – inconveniently

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I was having a lovely day yesterday with my children. The baby was in a delightful mood and my eldest son was all earnestness and wanting to please; the sun was out and we were able to all play outside for a while. When that got old, we went back inside, the baby had a nap and my son started reading his new Dr Seuss book aloud.

Then it happened. Inspiration struck.

This wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill inspiration, either, where you get a few ideas for scenes or the perfect bit of dialogue. This was changes-the-whole-novel-for-the-better inspiration. This was significant.

I’m all for being inspired. God only knows that I’ve been neglecting my manuscript lately, what with school holidays and public holidays and any number of other things that have been occupying what had previously been writing time. But I have been thinking about it more over recent days, working through plot holes in my head, figuring out the best order for the events in my story (does the baby come before or after the engagement, for example) and getting back into the heads of my main characters. I even found myself dreaming about them, which is always a good sign. However, I wasn’t prepared for inspiration just then. It was a bad time. You know, inconvenient.

All was not lost, however. I grabbed my notebook and started scribbling madly, trying to make sure that I didn’t lose the ideas. As I mentioned above, it was one of those uncanny, feverish type of inspirations, when things just start falling together and you know that a significant hurdle has been overcome. I couldn’t write things down fast enough.

Of course, real life was going to be a factor. Yes, the baby was in bed, but from having Dr Seuss in one ear I can see a few idiosyncrasies in my notes this morning. I suppose this was always going to happen when I’m writing a scene of high tension yet all I can hear is that if you want to go bump, bump, then you should jump on the hump of the Wump of Gump.

As such, I have some deciphering to do this morning. For example, “Ned” appeared in my notes, yet I have no character by that name. He was in the Dr Seuss book, though, so I think I can safely scribble him out. The Yanz that opens cans can also, I think, be eliminated. Yet there are other things which I’m not really sure about, whether they were from my head or the book I was listening to, so I’m going to have to do some thinking about those. I have set aside much of today, though, to do this. No, it’s not my usual Writing Day, but hopefully my mind is still close enough to where it was yesterday to make sense of my scribblings and make some real progress.

So, what do you do when inspiration strikes at an inconvenient time? How do you make sure you don’t forget any brainwaves that come when you’re doing anything other than writing? I think I survived yesterday’s onslaught intact, but if anyone has any bright ideas about what to do next time (Dr Seuss notwithstanding), I’d love to hear them.  :)

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Getting back into writing

Oh, I’m going terribly. One month into this new blog regime and already I’m posting three days late. I got into a routine of posting on Wednesdays, which is also my writing day, but this past week has been just a tad frantic. It’s the last week of the holidays before school term starts again, so I’ve been busy doing kid things and, unfortunately, the computer just didn’t get switched on. Now, though, I’m determined to rectify that.

The resumption of school term means that I have my free days back, where it’s just me and the baby. And that means I can actually get some writing done. I’ve done next to nothing since Christmas, simply because to write you need uninterrupted time – an obvious thing, yes, but I was very pleased to have my own experience confirmed by Mat Johnson in this article by Anne Trubek in the New York Times a couple of weeks back – and in my house uninterrupted time is hard to come by. I don’t even get more than about 4 hours uninterrupted sleeping time at night, as a child wakes up with bad dreams, or the baby starts crying, or both. So 4 hours of uninterrupted time during the day is a luxury I can hardly imagine, but I’m willing to accept one or two hours. Anything I can get, really.

So, this is my announcement. Starting this Wednesday, I’ll be writing one day a week again. If I tell the world that, then I will sure as heck have to make sure I do it, won’t I? And I’ve had so many ideas that I just need to get down. I’ve changed the year my story begins, which necessitates a bit of a rewrite of some parts but which makes other bits so much easier, I’ve added backstories, foibles and nuances to minor characters, and I’ve filled in a couple of gaping plot holes, so I’m itching to get back to my manuscript and make those changes, filling in the blanks that I left when I started this hiatus a month ago. The very idea is enticing.

Of course, I see the elephant in the room. If it’s so enticing, I hear you ask, why aren’t you doing that right now? Hard at work on this manuscript you keep talking about?  Well, to be honest, I’m multitasking. I have a few spare minutes before my husband gets home from his sporting practice, I have Midsomer Murders on the television and I’ve got a pot on the stove that is getting the occasional stir. Now is not really writing time. Once holidays are over, though, that’s something else entirely. And I can’t wait.