Scenes from my Real Life
Feb. 11th, 2013 03:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonTerminus: "Where do I get my ideas?"
There was a writing prompt recently that challenged whatever authors may be interested, to submit images or words showcasing where they did the 'work'.
And this got me thinking. Because I would love to say I do my work in a zero gravity opium den. One that finds me surrounded by a harem of scribes jotting down whatever stray idea I happen to babble while around us genetically modified butterflies hum Bach's concerto for two violins in D minor. That or I occupy a squat house basement re-appropriated from Control. From deep in my Bunker I broadcast my missives into the internet by use of a generator, a laptop and spoonfuls of instant coffee washed down with vitamin water.
I'd even like to say I do my work right where I'm sitting. In my father's old den, where the rain currently beats against the window and the cigarette burns neglected in the ashtray.
But the truth is that here is where I just record the work. Where it comes from is out there. Now I don't mean a bunch of hackneyed bullshit about getting my words from 'the streets'. I'll spare you any such self-aggrandizing agitprop right now. But what I do mean is that they come out of the blue - walking to the store for cigarettes in the rain, bicycling aimless through the O4W, driving down Highland on a grey Sunday morning.
So long as I'm as far as humanly possible from a pen or keyboard, the better.
For there is no ritual for their invocation. No pattern to con or map to navigate. A signal opens up in the cross of a street, I wander into the broadcasting range of a remote station. I start to get closer and can make out the music they're playing. A voice breaks through with an urgent message whispered across the static. I try to keep up but the signal dissolves back into noise before I can remember it all. But there are snatches of the message lurking in my head. When I get home I try to reverse engineer them from their fragments across the page. I fill in the blanks as best as I can. What comes out is often a coded dispatch half-translated offering equal parts nonsense and prophecy.
But sometimes there's enough in there to find both the idea's conclusion as well as its harmony. Enough to spring off, enough yarn to wander the maze a few pages.
Tonight I managed to jot down a few pages of notes for the second novel, managed to rework one scene in the narrative and have it shift more naturally into the next. I researched Crowley and Keats, Anubis and Fugazi lyrics. All ideas that bubbled up through the course of the day. Tomorrow I have a freelance job and a busy day. Tomorrow night, after a drink with a friend maybe, I'll have the work.
There was a writing prompt recently that challenged whatever authors may be interested, to submit images or words showcasing where they did the 'work'.
And this got me thinking. Because I would love to say I do my work in a zero gravity opium den. One that finds me surrounded by a harem of scribes jotting down whatever stray idea I happen to babble while around us genetically modified butterflies hum Bach's concerto for two violins in D minor. That or I occupy a squat house basement re-appropriated from Control. From deep in my Bunker I broadcast my missives into the internet by use of a generator, a laptop and spoonfuls of instant coffee washed down with vitamin water.
I'd even like to say I do my work right where I'm sitting. In my father's old den, where the rain currently beats against the window and the cigarette burns neglected in the ashtray.
But the truth is that here is where I just record the work. Where it comes from is out there. Now I don't mean a bunch of hackneyed bullshit about getting my words from 'the streets'. I'll spare you any such self-aggrandizing agitprop right now. But what I do mean is that they come out of the blue - walking to the store for cigarettes in the rain, bicycling aimless through the O4W, driving down Highland on a grey Sunday morning.
So long as I'm as far as humanly possible from a pen or keyboard, the better.
For there is no ritual for their invocation. No pattern to con or map to navigate. A signal opens up in the cross of a street, I wander into the broadcasting range of a remote station. I start to get closer and can make out the music they're playing. A voice breaks through with an urgent message whispered across the static. I try to keep up but the signal dissolves back into noise before I can remember it all. But there are snatches of the message lurking in my head. When I get home I try to reverse engineer them from their fragments across the page. I fill in the blanks as best as I can. What comes out is often a coded dispatch half-translated offering equal parts nonsense and prophecy.
But sometimes there's enough in there to find both the idea's conclusion as well as its harmony. Enough to spring off, enough yarn to wander the maze a few pages.
Tonight I managed to jot down a few pages of notes for the second novel, managed to rework one scene in the narrative and have it shift more naturally into the next. I researched Crowley and Keats, Anubis and Fugazi lyrics. All ideas that bubbled up through the course of the day. Tomorrow I have a freelance job and a busy day. Tomorrow night, after a drink with a friend maybe, I'll have the work.