Inspiration — at 1 am
The writing bug bit me last night.
At one in the morning I started a new short story, hammering out about three hundred words. I couldn’t sleep, and in my head I had blueprints for an odd idea. It’s a fiction piece revolving around a character who begins to sleep walk. It popped into my head yesterday while reading “Lake Woebegon Days” by Garrison Keillor — it was the part where the narrator mentions Donny Lundeberg sleep walking to the town ball park, crouching behind home plate, and calling for a fastball. Not only was it funny as hell, it turned on a bulb in my mind.
That’s the thing about being a writer: Inspiration knocks at all hours of the day. I think of new story ideas, ways to untie knots when I rewrite, and connect imagery and action to metaphor at the oddest times. I’ll be in the shower (that old cliché), driving around town, in the grocery store, or watching a baseball game when a thought will race across the front of my conscious, like my mind spitting out an answer after mulling it over for a few days. When it happens I usually snap my fingers and say, “That’s what I’ll do.”
Last night was different, though. My mind wouldn’t quit working, again. As I tossed and turned in bed I began imagining scenes and characters, conversations and actions. Then I started writing the first few paragraphs in my head. That’s when I got up and sat at my computer. If I don’t copy what I write in my head the words usually vanish, escaping from one of my ears. From there it might fly around until it passes through the head of another writer.
I wrote for about twenty minutes. I let my heart type, stopping to think about word choice and arrange the opening scenes on paper. The white of the Word document illuminated my room. I saved it and went back to bed, where I tossed and turned for another hour. (I think it was because I drank an energy drink seven hours before. A can of Tampico Energy had been lingering in the fridge for a while, and my roommate and I didn’t know who it belonged to. He thought he probably got it at a vending trade show in Long Beach, so I decided to drink it. It kept me buzzed all night.)
It’s something I don’t often do, but it’s not unusual. The thing is I’m in the middle of rewriting an essay, which has put my novel on hiatus. How the hell am I going to finish another short story with all that on my mind?
Ugh. Life as a writer.
At one in the morning I started a new short story, hammering out about three hundred words. I couldn’t sleep, and in my head I had blueprints for an odd idea. It’s a fiction piece revolving around a character who begins to sleep walk. It popped into my head yesterday while reading “Lake Woebegon Days” by Garrison Keillor — it was the part where the narrator mentions Donny Lundeberg sleep walking to the town ball park, crouching behind home plate, and calling for a fastball. Not only was it funny as hell, it turned on a bulb in my mind.
That’s the thing about being a writer: Inspiration knocks at all hours of the day. I think of new story ideas, ways to untie knots when I rewrite, and connect imagery and action to metaphor at the oddest times. I’ll be in the shower (that old cliché), driving around town, in the grocery store, or watching a baseball game when a thought will race across the front of my conscious, like my mind spitting out an answer after mulling it over for a few days. When it happens I usually snap my fingers and say, “That’s what I’ll do.”
Last night was different, though. My mind wouldn’t quit working, again. As I tossed and turned in bed I began imagining scenes and characters, conversations and actions. Then I started writing the first few paragraphs in my head. That’s when I got up and sat at my computer. If I don’t copy what I write in my head the words usually vanish, escaping from one of my ears. From there it might fly around until it passes through the head of another writer.
I wrote for about twenty minutes. I let my heart type, stopping to think about word choice and arrange the opening scenes on paper. The white of the Word document illuminated my room. I saved it and went back to bed, where I tossed and turned for another hour. (I think it was because I drank an energy drink seven hours before. A can of Tampico Energy had been lingering in the fridge for a while, and my roommate and I didn’t know who it belonged to. He thought he probably got it at a vending trade show in Long Beach, so I decided to drink it. It kept me buzzed all night.)
It’s something I don’t often do, but it’s not unusual. The thing is I’m in the middle of rewriting an essay, which has put my novel on hiatus. How the hell am I going to finish another short story with all that on my mind?
Ugh. Life as a writer.
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