10 Minute Writer

Someday, I hope, I’ll be a famous novelist.

I’ll see my name in print. I’ll have links on Amazon.com. I’ll have a fan page on Facebook. I’ll be cleverly reclusive, leaving my readers wanting a little bit more.

I might grace them with a personal appearance at a bookstore, signing autographs in copies of my book. (I’ve already decided what I’m going to write in them. There’s a secret message for you on page 72. Love, Katharine

And if that bloated, self absorbed image isn’t enough, here’s more. Inevitably, someone will say to me. “Where do you get your ideas?” And I’m going to look them straight in the eye and say, “Kmart.”

As ridiculous as that sounds, the truth is even more so. The truth is, I don’t know. (Not that anyone’s asking that question of me who is not 11 years old and lives in my house.)

I had just an idea this last week. The idea was hiccups! My poor protagonist was having a hard day trying to please a lot of different people. She was scurrying around her job, doing her regular Tuesday morning duties and allowing for various plot points and character developments to seep through. But there was a problem. There was no unifying conflict, no tying thread, no glue to hold the scene together.

After stewing on this for a day or two, the answer came to me: she has the hiccups!

After that EVERYTHING clicked. I sped through the scene, laughed at myself in several places and completed it in record time.

I don’t know where I got the idea. I was not suffering from them. No one in my family was. It just came like a lightening bolt into my little brain.

I’m not telling anyone this to brag about my brilliance — but, I guess to eliminate this question from our future book signings. To ask where do you get your ideas is to suggest there is a retail store or a website or a physical place that we can order them (now with free shipping!)

I don’t think inspiration is like that. I think that it comes through concentration, practice, observation, analysis, patience, and luck. No one ( I am assuming this from my vast book signing experience) really wants to hear the answer quite like that, they want an easy answer, albeit an equally ridiculous one. If those short cuts to inspiration were true places, then no one would be original. And that would be tragic.

The hiccups idea was perfect for Chapter 18. But this week, I’m on Chapter 19. Oops. Can’t revisit the whole hiccup idea. I have a different POV character, different conflicts, different setting, different mood. The only thing that’s really the same here is the author.

Well that’s not entirely true. I’m different too. Unlike the brief moment of despair last week when Chapter 18 had not yet gelled, this week I’m going to trust that lightning is going to strike again. Oh, how I wish I did have Kmart to deliver my good idea because I looked for it today on websites that contained country music lyrics, armed forces terminology, definitions of famous Indian recipes and Facebook. And yet, nuthin’.

That’s okay. Something will happen. I have faith in my creative process. I’m learning to trust mine. You can trust yours too.

(And I’ve changed my secret message. Now it’s on page 147!)