As a writer, I need inspiration. I spend what feels like an inordinate amount of time staring off into the distance or sitting with a heap of knitting in my lap that isn’t knitting itself.
This is a different situation than plain old, irritating writer’s block. It’s the way my mind does its mental filing and housekeeping. The outward stillness doesn’t give any hint at all to all the paths my mind is investigating.
I may look like I’m doing nothing, but I’m in the midst of a crowded train station, picking pockets to see how it’s done. Or I’m examining the reaction time needed to dodge an object thrown my way. The characters I’m writing about are me in my mind and I need to figure out what we’re going to do next.
Internalizing things isn’t always enough, though. Movement stimulates other areas of creativity. Movements like walking over to the office kitchen for tea, or my fingers inching their way across my desktop like Itsy Bitsy Spider, straight toward my little pile of chocolately snacks.
There’s only so much inspiration even I can get by finishing off a whole sleeve of Thin Mints. Sometimes, I need to reach out for something else.
I keep a small library beside my desk. There are books on mythology, grammar, medical folklore and skip tracing. When all else fails and my mind goes blank, I flip through the pages of my books.
Maybe a certain word will jump off a page and I’ll see it repeated in different books. Or a story will spark an interest that I can take that in a new direction with my operatives.
Those little triggers are a bit of writerly alchemy. And alchemy, no matter how you experience it, is magic.
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