Things have been a bit quiet around hear of late, chiefly because I’ve been up to my eyeballs with work. My “day job” work has suddenly picked up, and I’m also completing revisions of one novel and starting the planning of a second. Plus a couple of short stories that have been rattling around in the back of my mind. Writing is hard work, as all the writers in the crowd doubtless know, and harder still when you’re balancing the desires of a would-be full-time writer against the reality of a full-time something else.
But today, I’d like to talk about those moments of grace when the writing isn’t hard, when the words just flow off your keyboard (or pen) and onto the page. The moments when the Muse is alive and dancing. The moments when magic happens. Loreena McKennitt calls these moments “visits”, something to be embraced when they come and missed or anticipated when they’re gone. You can create a place of openness, with the space and energy to welcome such a visit, but you can’t force them. They come on their own timetable.
I had one such moment yesterday, and it came at a most inconvenient time: 9pm, as I was getting out of the shower and heading to bed. My spouse was already asleep, but I’d been mulling over the next book I’m about to start writing and one of the central characters was suddenly alive and present and itching to tell me his story.
I stumbled, dripping wet, into my office, grabbed a nice smooth pen (aside from my fountain pens, I really like these) and sat down with the notebook I’m keeping for the new book. An hour later, I’d filled ten pages. There’s more to come, I’m sure – Josh Newcomb hasn’t finished telling me his story yet, and I still need to explore the other characters whose lives intersect with his. But in that short hour where the Muse was present and alive, I got a much better handle on the events that set what happens in my story into motion.
When I told my spouse this morning about what had happened, she just shook her head. “Why couldn’t you have waited, written it down in the morning?” she asked. I suspect this is a question few novelists would have asked. I’ve learned the hard way that when the creative spirit is alive and its energy crackling through the air, one ignores it at one’s peril. When I don’t write down those explorations, those flashes of insight, as they happen, I’m almost always sorry later.
How about you? Have you experienced those moments of insight in your own writing? I’m curious what the experience feels like for others.
