Back a few years now, writer Dinty Moore posted a pithy Jack London quote on his Facebook page: "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
That made me chuckle. It reinforces the popular notion that writers are effete, dreamy types. Maybe that's how London thought of his peers? Or maybe he himself struggled …
The whole subject seems to strike the general public as mysterious, because over the years as I've done hundreds of invited talks and readings around the country, people always ask, "Where do you get your ideas?" The question is well-meant, but it implies that book ideas are hard to come by. Let me tell you, I've never been at a loss for inspiration or ideas, and would have published more than 27 books by now if I could type faster and if I had more time. Or if I'd started writing books in high school...
I’ve often had too many book ideas and too many books in various stages of completion. Given how complex some of them will be to finish and how much research some involve, I don't know if I'll live long enough to get them all done. Or any of them, to be honest, especially since I’ve been concentrating on personal essays over the last few years with gratifying success: close to eighty online and print publications.
Here's one to-write list I made before the pandemic. It included books that only had bits of plot, a title and opening pages done, all the way through to books that had as much as fifty or more pages actually written. But the ones that were just fragments right now live almost as richly inside my head as the ones that have fuller lives on paper, and mean just as much to me:
1--A historical novel set in 1310 Bruges
2--A mystery set in World War II Lithuania
3--A sequel to my novella The Vampyre of Gotham
4--A historical novel set in First Century Judea
5--A memoir following up on my successful book My Germany
6--A satire set in Georgian England
7--A dystopian novel -- and no, it won't be a trilogy
8--A literary thriller about the murder of an American author
9--A ninth Nick Hoffman mystery picking up where Assault With a Deadly Lie left off*
I actually did write and publish #9 and the follow-up: State University of Murder and Department of Death.
For some of these projects, I have dozens of research books bought and shelved, waiting to be studied, absorbed, and utilized. For the one set in Bruges, I would need to revisit Flanders to do more extensive site research. I would also need to travel to Lithuania for that W.W. II book. So it's not only actual writing I need time for, it's time (and funds) for travel as well as extensive reading, research, and interviews.
All of these books-in-progress popped into my head unexpectedly at one time or another. I don't need to chase inspiration with a club, a pitcher of martinis, or a Barney's gift card. Inspiration always knows exactly where to find me. What I really need to do is what Cher sings: turn back time.
*Assault With a Deadly Lie was my first Midwest Book Award Finalist.
Image by congerdesign from Pixabay
I used to keep a list of projects on my computer so I could remind myself to finish them and get them out; and then I'd forget about it/them and write something else. I look back and wish I'd had the time to finish everything, or wonder if I wasted time on this series of shorts or essays or whatever. There is never enough time and I've tried to just stop thinking about it. But, I can't. Everything I look at turns into a part of a story or a topic for a blog post. good post.
Lev when you feel like that you know. You're a real writer