Inspo

...when it hits

Hello my lovelies!

And apologies for my absence last week. Too much brain-things going on to even have a fingernail’s worth of inspiration as to what to write.

But it’s all settled down for the time being, so I thought I should write about that very thing - inspiration - and how the way in which it’s coming to me these days has changed a bit.

For those of you who’ve been reading my work for a while, you’ll know that I’ve already written about this topic - funnily enough it was around this time last year:

In my previous life - the one I had a few years ago, not an actual previous life where I was the Queen of Sheba LOL - my working-from-home job was such that whilst baking cakes and treats for cafes and markets, the creative side of my brain could ‘wander at will’.

Ideas would arrive with regular occurrence, and I would scribble them down on my baking run-sheet.

Finding the time to actually write those scribblings into a legible story plot might have been another thing, but I often treated myself to half an hour of writing at the end of a long day, after I’d done the invoices and paperwork my day of baking would produce.

Just another day of baking. Probably less than a quarter of the stuff I used to pump out of that kitchen. No wonder my feet were sore!

Of course, I no longer live that life now (the baking one, not the Queen of Sheba one). I’m on my own, have a full time job, and the evenings are all mine.

My job is incredibly rewarding, in every aspect that a job can be, and for that I’m endlessly thankful. But it requires every ounce of thought to concentrate on the task at hand, the tasks coming up later on, and all the events we have coming up in the weeks and months ahead.

Driving to and from work is a time of peaceful reflection. In the morning, I am rewarded with glorious rays of sunshine stretching ethereal limbs across the grumpy half-awake sky. Corellas huddle on street lights like barnacles, while other birds zip-zap between the trees like they just drank six red bulls each. One morning last week after some welcome rain overnight, I saw four rainbows. Four of them! Coming home again, the roads are a crazy place little busier, so the drive is a little longer. I’m tired after a busy day on my feet, and thankful for a 30-40 minute sit down in mostly-flowing traffic.

The Roe Highway is usually way busier than this, but I took this shot on a Saturday afternoon.

Inspiration?

I’m not seeking it.

I am getting back into writing Book 3, after being reminded by a writer friend that the more I ‘sit in the story’, the more the ideas will blossom.

But when my body and brain are both exhausted, it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open on the drive home, and then stay awake long enough in the evening to do a little cross stitch, watch something on TV (I bought Season One of The Crown for $3 at an Op Shop recently and am rather addicted to the show now!), or hop into bed and read. After I’ve dealt with that days’ emails and other shizz going on, of course.

However, inspiration still comes, and for that I am amazed.

A few weeks ago I was driving home from work, not even thinking about Book 3 and the conundrum I had about what the heck to call it. The working title was ‘Replated’, which I hated (hey, that rhymes!), but I wanted a title that reflected the fact that my main character in that story, Bronwyn, a 50+ year-old celebrity chef who goes from being a total b***ch and getting what she deserves, to a woman who realises her life mistakes and tries to right them. So she is kind of re-representing herself, it’s still her but she’s different; the dish has the same ingredients, but it’s plated differently - replated. Get it? No, it sucked. But it’s what I was working with.

And then I’m sitting in my car somewhere along the Roe Highway, just one of hundreds of commuters going somewhere, when the title of the book literally just dropped into my head. Like, just dropped out of nowhere.

Just Desserts.

I think I had what some people call an epiphany.

An epiphany (from the ancient Greek ἐπιφάνεια, epiphanea, "manifestation, striking appearance") is an experience of a sudden and striking realization. Generally the term is used to describe a scientific breakthrough or a religious or philosophical discovery, but it can apply in any situation in which an enlightening realisation allows a problem or situation to be understood from a new and deeper perspective.

(Thanks Wikipedia)

I mean, the book is about food (as are all my books because - duh - I’m a chef), and desserts and all manner of deliciousness feature in this book (as do all my books), and one getting one’s Just Desserts means - receiving an appropriate, deserved punishment or consequence for one’s actions, and mate - everyone in my book gets their just deserts - proper spelling there.

Where did that name come from?

This is the magical thing about writing and inspiration - it seems to come from nowhere, but it can be so good, and so perfect.

Another gush of inspiration came last week during my fortnightly Writers Group meeting at KSP Writers House in Greenmount. Members take turns each fortnight to present a ‘writer’s tip’, which can be a discussion, a power point presentation of notes from a course someone’s done, or anything writerly. The topic of the Tip was Subtext - the unspoken underlying meaning in dialogue - and we were offered a choice of things to write about for half an hour. I wanted to write something to do with Just Desserts, purely because the name had recently come to me, and I wanted to write the book that went with such an awesome title.

The verandah at KSP Writers House.

My fingers started tapping across my dodgy laptop keyboard. I saw the scene in my head. One of the characters - the youngest daughter of Bronwyn, the character I mentioned earlier - was emerging from behind some bushes and trees, limping in the dark across a large, recently watered, lushly grassed oval. She was injured, in pain, in tears, but as she got closer to her dad and Bronwyn who were sitting in the rays spilling from a streetlight, she chose to play down the pain she was in. Her daughter was missing - taken by (NOT REVEALING THIS - YOU’LL HAVE TO READ THE BOOK one day), and that pain was overriding everything else going on in her body. The words and scenes and dialogue just poured out of my brain and down into my fingers, describing what I could see going on in my head was brilliant. I was like, ‘Oh? That happens? But that’s so cool! He comes back? And that happens?’

The half hour of writing vanished, and I wanted to write more, but the night has to move on, so I saved (IMPORTANT!) and closed the file.

The thing I guess I’m learning at this point is that the inspiration is out there. Even when my brain is overwhelmed by Life Stuff, and all the mess that is smeared across my path with the nitty gritty reality of separation, even if I can shut all that crap out for just a little while, story snippets will appear.

It’s encouraging. Because for a while there, I thought I’d lost the ability to be creative anymore. When it feels like your brain is being battered by bull**it, writing stories feels very flippant and unnecessary.

But it isn’t. In fact I’m realising just how important being creative is, and how important it is to let inspiration find me.

The inspiration of another new day dawning.

I’d love to hear how inspo finds you! Do you have to do a routine in order to ‘get in the zone’, or can it just tumble from the heavens?

Maggie x