Midnight inspirations
April 6th, 2013
If you climb Mt Wellington (aka Kunanyi) which is the mountain that lies behind the city of Hobart in Southern Tasmania, you will sometimes see tiny spiderlings that spin a long thread then throw themselves onto the wind, with no idea where they will end up. At the moment I feel very like one of those spiderlings. 🙂
For the last few weeks I’ve been working on the plot of Children of the Claw. I’ve been cutting out interesting pictures and sticking them in my Claw notebook, and jotting down ideas and possible scenes, and what might happen when.
Pages from my 'Children of the Claw' notebook
I like to have a good strong plot before I start the actual writing, as a sort of safety net. That plot will often change as I go along, but I like knowing it’s there. So I’d worked out various things about the main characters and their parents, and what was going to happen to them. And then, a couple of nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with a strange sentence in my head. Here it is:
‘It was New Year’s Eve, and the last fortune-telling duck was dead.’
Well! I have no idea where that came from, but in the middle of the night I thought it was brilliant. 🙂 So I told myself to remember it, then went back to sleep. Of course, in the cold morning light it didn’t look quite so wonderful, but I wrote it down, thinking that I’d probably use it in some future book, and forgot about it.
Or rather, I tried to forget about it. But it kept creeping back into my mind, all day, until in the end I stopped what I was doing, and asked myself if perhaps this odd sentence had something to do with The Claw. And the answer was YES!
So I spun a long thread and threw myself to the mercy of the winds of imagination, with no idea where I would end up. But as sometimes happens, those winds took me to a VERY interesting place. As a result, the whole first part of the plot has changed dramatically. What’s more, that dead fortune-telling duck has brought the *zing* factor to the story, which I need if I’m to fall in love with it. And really, writing a book is such a long process that you need to be in love with it to get it finished.
So there we are. I’m not going to give you any more details, but I will tell you that I am now officially in love with Children of the Claw! I still haven’t got the whole plot worked out, but I’m getting there. And this is going to be a really enjoyable book, both to write and to read. Phew!
Meanwhile I’m reading Wildwood by Colin Meloy. It reminds me a bit of Narnia, but different, and it’s very good so far.
Have any of you had midnight inspirations? Tell us about them if you have. Aren’t they strange?
13 thoughts on “Midnight inspirations”
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About Lian
Lian Tanner has been dynamited while scuba diving and arrested while busking. She once spent a week in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, hunting for a Japanese soldier left over from the Second World War. Nowadays she lives by the beach in southern Tasmania.
More about Lian
A midnight inspiration I had was :
‘Tell death to play with me’
Ooooh, that’s interesting, Io!
Thx, Lian!
I don’t know where that came from!
I know, it’s strange, isn’t it. Our unconscious minds can throw up such interesting things. It’s the writer’s secret weapon!
It is? I didn’t know that. Very interesting.
‘The winged-stallion opened it’s wings and danced across the park’
That’s a good one too.
Thanks! But yours is way better than mine.
‘It was New Year’s Eve, and the last fortune-telling duck was dead.’
I LOVE IT! 😀
Hi Lian !
I have a good one…..
” People thought that I was weird ,confusing ,alone until it came ”
and
” Mercy shall never come to me ,shall death come to thee.”
Thx
From Lilli
😉
Oooh, they are interesting, Lilli! Don’t we have strange and wonderful minds, to come up with these things??!!!
I cant WAIT to read them! I’m not writing Children Of The Claw, or reading it but I still love it! After our catch up I decided to catch up on my writing. I haven’t started writing yet, I restrained myself and started to plan it in a word document. So far I like the idea, and mums says its “yeah, good. I like this and that but i didnt understand this or that…” she didnt understand it because it was my planning page and only I can understand it fully. 😀 Anywho, the othernight after some hard-core ideas it wasnt quite midnight but I woke with this phrse:
“Howling at the moon and screaming at the wind. Overworking brains and bleeding bodies everywhere. I need to go. I need to leave. Drag along behind me take the crown and king with you. Never eat bad bread. I have come to my fanged fate.”
Yeah well. I woke and wrote it in my bedside notebook then went back to sleep. Next morning saved it in a word document. I still have no idea what on earth is going on with it. I’ll let you know if anything comes to me.
I’m glad you’re catching up on your writing Lily. And it’ll be interesting to see how it changes things for you, planning things out beforehand. I hope you’ll let us know whether it makes your stories better or worse. Everyone has a different way of going about these things, so it’s good to experiment and see what works for you.
And I love your midnight inspiration! Very very strange, as these things always are, but full of richness and possibility.
BTW, it was very nice to see you in Launceston and to hear about what you’re doing!