Sunday 19 May 2013

On Holidays and inspiration

View of the Alhambra from the Mirador, Grenada


So, I've been working pretty much non-stop for the past three months - and when I say non-stop, I mean evenings, weekends, lunch breaks, down time at work. It's been stressful, it's been unhealthy, and it's been utterly, bone-wearyingly exhausting, and, worst of all, it's become unproductive. An exhausted brain struggles to be creative; the concomitant reduction in output causes the pace of work to increase in order to compensate; and the whole thing becomes a vicious, ugly circle that leads to nothing good. But what's the alternative? The work needs to be done.

I had a holiday planned, and, as the date got closer and the project still wasn't finished (side note: one day, I will learn not to underestimate how long it will take me to complete any particular piece of writing. Because I'm never right. I could guess sixteen years and it'd end up taking thirty-two. I'm that bad at looking at a volume of work and trying to set a realistic completion date), I started to wonder if I'd have to take my laptop and work in the evenings. The whole idea of that just made me want to cry - and that's not me. Writing doesn't make me want to cry. It makes me want to tear my hair out and yell profanities at the heavens sometimes, but it never, ever causes that level of despair, that sense of "Dear God, just get me away from this because I cannot look at it any more."



So I thought, no. No work. Don't care. It's an arbitrary deadline, based on assumptions that will probably not play out, and if they do, I will deal with that. I am not working on this holiday.

So I took the laptop. But I used it twice: both times for checking Facebook.

As the holiday came to an end, and we were on a coach from Granada to the airport in Malaga, I was thinking that, for the first time in a long time, I felt ready to go, willingly, to my computer and drag a novel out of the depths of this MS that I have written.

And then, unexpectedly, this happened*:


Sc 1: INT - BUS

[RACH is absently scanning the passing hillside when suddenly a RANDOM IMAGE bursts unannounced into her cerebral cortex]

RANDOM IMAGE
Hi! I'm the first scene of your new novel!


RACH

You're my... Wait, what?

RANDOM
Your new novel! Hi!

RACH
Where did you come from?

RANDOM 
...Seriously? You've been writing for how long now?

RACH
Thirty-some years, why?

RANDOM
...And you still want to know where ideas come from? Don't you read Pratchett?

RACH
Good point. Okay, hi! It's been a while, I forget how this goes. 

RANDOM
Yeah, that's really it. Have fun!

RACH
Wait, wait, wait - I only have the first scene! What happens next?

RANDOM
Haha, seriously? 

RACH
...Right. Crap. I forgot. Any chance you could come into focus a little clearer at least?


[RANDOM IDEA fizzles a little, readjusts. Faint shadows become slightly more visible. A name appears.]


RANDOM
Cool?

RACH
Not so much. 



RANDOM
What do you want, a synopsis?

RACH
That'd be great, thanks.

RANDOM
Aren't you just the cutest. 

RACH
Okay, how about a hint?

RANDOM
You're in Spain?

RACH
Yes I am.

RANDOM
Yeah. That was the hint.

RACH
That was the hint? Something completely obvious that I already knew?

RANDOM
Godspeed. See you in a couple of years!


So. I have a new novel...




(*Dramatic reenactment; may not accurately represent events as they transpired)

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