COLUMN: Inspiration

I toyed around with a bunch of different ideas of what to write for this column, and I decided to stick to what was foremost in my mind right now which is my next novel.  My situation with said novel is this; my editor has expressed an interest in reading it, but has not seen it yet.  My debut novel State of Decay is in print, the sequel The Silent Army releases on October 5th of this year, and the last part of the trilogy Element Zero has been handed in.  So, my current novel (MCN) will be the first non-revivors piece of work she’ll see from me.  For these reasons I won’t get into the specifics of what the book is about except to say that it is character-centric, dealing primarily with redemption, and is set against a sci-fi backdrop that leans heavily on psychological and body horror.  Instead, I’ll chronicle the steps I go through in writing the novel, since I tend to follow the same sort of steps for all my work and you might find some of it useful or at the very least interesting.

Step 1: The Idea.  This is probably the fuzziest step because unfortunately there is no way to predict when, or how, inspiration will strike.  It is kind of like a mosquito that employs a highly sophisticated cloaking device…you don’t know it’s injected you with idea-wriggling saliva until after its gone and left you scratching idly at the raw, raised flesh of inspiration.  You can’t make the mosquito approach, it comes and goes as it pleases and you only even know it exists because of what it leaves behind.  The mosquito of inspiration is very mysterious.

It will be different for you, but with MCN it first came to me when I actually misinterpreted something I’d seen in a film my wife and I were watching.  My wife politely pointed out that I am a dumbass, but still the itch had begun and was demanding to be scratched.  The more I thought about it, the more life of its own it took until I found myself thinking about it all the time.  MCN has nothing at all to do with the film we were watching, but in a way that’s my point; you have to take inspiration where you can get it, whether it’s while walking, working, showering, watching TV, reading or dreaming.

The best piece of advice I can offer here is don’t ever throw an idea away just because it’s unconventional or sounds crazy.  I had people tell me flat out State of Decay would never be published solely because it was told in multiple-first-person but published it was.  I worry about MCN because of its strangeness but I’m going to write it anyway because I’m very excited about it and in my opinion that should be the number one reason you write anything.  The way I look at it there are a million reasons your novel might get rejected, it might as well be rejected on your terms.  Besides art loves a fresh injection of weird, just look at Christopher Moore’s (awesome) books.

Step 2: Vetting The Idea.  This is especially important if the mosquito visited you while you were heavily intoxicated but however you arrive at your original idea, you need to decide if you have a novel, a short story, or just nothing.  You don’t want to jump into novel mode only to get 50,000 words in and have the gum lose its flavor.  No matter how much I like my latest idea, it may or may not be novel material and I’ve found that trying to stretch it only ends in head pain and gastric upset.  For MCN, I tested the waters with a few short stories to get a taste for the world and to see how much there was to develop.  Personally I like this method because should you get the novel published, people may later be very interested to see the short stories and if not, hey, free short stories.

Step 3: Taking the Plunge.  Ok, you’ve gotten the bug, you’ve sucked on the lozenge of inspiration (yes I’m switching metaphors, sue me) for a while and it has lasting power.  You’re ready to start.  For me I like to start the same way I start to build anything; dump all the pieces out on the table in front of me and start tinkering but your milage may vary.  The idea isn’t that fleshed out yet but I need to work out a broad view of who will be part of the story and how they’ll fit into it.  For MCN I came up with a list of characters, and a rough sketch of the world where it will take place.  Some of these characters may fall by the way (as at least one did in State of Decay) but at this stage I like everything in a pile.

Ignore any nagging voice that tries to derail you at this point; maybe everything won’t pan out exactly as you hoped but it’s too early for the nagging voice to know that.  This is one of the really fun stages for me, rivaled only be the next stage which, if John doesn’t tire of my incessant insect metaphors, I will get into in my next post.

Next: World Building

James Knapp is the author of State of Decay (ROC Books, Penguin) which released in February of 2010, as well as the next two books in the Revivors trilogy The Silent Army (to be released Oct 05, 2010) and Element Zero (April 5th, 2011).  He was born in Dover New Hampshire, and after a nomadic romp around New England which took him from Pownal to Bridgeport, he settled in Groton Massachusetts with his wife Kim where he writes code by day, and fiction by night.  He will not claim outright that reading his works will change your life, but if cornered, he will imply it.

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