Inspiration

After procrastinating and fiddling around for several days, last night I sat down and really seriously started working on the new ending for Prayer and Prey. It took a few minutes to get into the flow, but once I did, I went for it. In just over an hour and a half I'd written 2500 words and only stopped because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have gotten any sleep. Now I can't wait to get back to it, despite having realized as I climbed into bed I'd forgotten to have a character do something she absolutely has to do for the story to work. But that's a small problem and can be quickly addressed.

Inspiration is a funny thing. Sometimes it just happens, and idea falls on you and you just have to write it. Other times you have to coax it a little. I was definitely coaxing it to find the inspiration to start work on this new ending, but once I got into it, it was there by the bucket-full. It amazes me how easy it is to fall back into a certain voice, even after months or years away from a project. It may take a minute or two to warm into it, but once there, I find I could keep going forever.

I hope the same thing happens when I dive back into the sordid little world I created for my story Angels, Oddities and Orthodox Habits. I've agreed to be a part of an anthology of novellas based around this story, so have to expand the 8000 words to around 20 000. This is part of the same anthology idea I mentioned in an earlier post, with the Wizardpunk story. I struggled to find a story that would work in that world, so suggested that perhaps another anthology on a different theme might work, and bam! Here I am with a team of people working on stories based on mine. Scary!

But back to inspiration. I hope I can fall back into the voice of that story because it's very lush and overblown in some ways, and the world is very dark and sordid. I haven't got a huge number of ideas as to how to expand the story by 12K, but am sure they will come to me. I have some ideas at least. Luckily I don't have to be done with this one until the beginning of November. Plenty of time to mull. Let's just hope I don't get a lightning bolt of inspiration to do something completely different while I'm trying to focus on that.