Inspiration Overload?!
I’d never thought I’d say that one day.
I believed the lack of inspiration was the worst thing in the world. That when it hit, it was a catastrophe. Well, I’ve just found out that the contrary can just be as problematic; there are only 24 hours in a day, and my chronic lack of focus really becomes a hassle in this case. (I can’t focus well nor for long, really. I hide it well, but I can’t.)
I’m currently in the throes of inspiration overload. Too many things going on in my head, too many things I want to do, much more than what I can do, in fact. Ideas for short stories are bursting out of my mind every ten minutes, and when it’s not for stories, it’s for illustrations. I can’t focus on work well, I can’t focus on finishing my novel, since five minutes into my writing, I already feel like doing something else, not out of lack of inspiration, but out of wanting to concretize other thoughts.Read More
I wonder if I’m right in thinking so, or if I am sort of deluding myself with this belief. I know that more than one writer has said that the first million words (or so) an author writes is crap, and I’m ready to swallow this and go on (although I’m probably past the million already given the amount of writing I do, but let’s consider it as a million words of serious novelling, not blog posts, aborted attempts at stories in junior high, and the likes). Now—and this is more specifically related to the “quantity vs quality” argument—can we consider that every word of every sentence of every first draft will always necessarily be crap, regardless of the years of practice a writer has behind her?
Although this doesn’t work the same for all of us who write, finding names for my characters from the start is for me always an important task. I need the names to resonate with the personality they’re associated with, and I need to be able to name my protagonists, rather than refer to them as “character X and Y”. At times, I’ll need days to find THE name, and it’ll usually be triggered by something totally unrelated. At other moments, the name comes by itself, or I already have it in mind, and develop a personality around it. Both methods work in my case, which is something I’m glad about, yet I must admit that the first one can be annoying—what if the days turn to weeks or even months? Remaining stuck because I lack a name to go on with a story can be very frustrating.