Since I’ve begun making a solid attempt at writing, I’ve found that the most fun I have “on the job” is when I get sudden, cascading bursts of inspiration.
I’m working on the fourth draft of my first novel, incorporating feedback from my beta readers. I received some invaluable feedback which has resulted in a ton of corrections and re-writes. Some of the most significant changes come at the expense of a character that – only after hearing from readers – I’ve figured is superfluous. So, the vast majority of that character’s appearance – including two full chapters written from his perspective – is being removed from the book.
In the process of working on these re-writes I, of course, have found a number of other changes – both structural and grammatical – that I’ve been working on. Yesterday, a series of those changes sparked a fire in my brain about how the final conflict in my book comes about, and prompted me to write several pages of notes on how to change it. Ideally, the changes will simultaneously add some plausibility to the scene and ratchet up the excitement of the book’s climax, but the brainstorming session brought with it an unexpected benefit.
While I was writing notes for the new scene, I kept thinking up little bits of info for the second book in the series, on which I have only just started working. As I began taking these notes I found myself getting frustrated, much like a kid who has a video game waiting for him but has to finish his chores before he gets to play. The moment I finished the notes for the first book, I plummeted head-first into the notes for the second, and I found myself doing something I haven’t done before: plotting out an entire character’s throughline for the second book.
The notes for the first book would be indecipherable to anyone but me. They’re a haphazard pile of written and re-written ideas with passages scratched out or highlighted, margin notes, and scribbled notes on the margin notes. The “process” worked great for me, because I’d just brain dump into my notes journal anytime inspiration struck.
That’s sort of what happened this time, too, but the process cascaded from a few notes on book one’s climax to scattered character and plot notes for book two to organizing book two ideas and separating them from the book three notes to writing out the entire path of one of the three plotlines in book two. It’s rare that I’ve been struck by this type of hardcore inspiration all at once, and it felt fantastic.
This, without question, is the most fun I have with my writing. Generating random ideas and figuring out whether they’ll work or whether they’re ridiculous (or maybe a combination of both) is invigorating, and tends to be way more interesting than actually coming up with the words. The wordsmithing part of writing is an odd combination of tension, fun, and drudgery, but brainstorming sessions like this one are all the gaiety with none of the grind.
And the beautiful interconnectedness of it all? Yesterday’s note session was like cranking the generator handle that charged up my literary batteries. I can’t wait to dig deep into the second book.
