Searching for inspiration is as useless as “searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie.” Isn’t that what Alicia Silverstone’s character, Cher, said in the hit teen movie Clueless? No, not quite, but you get the idea. I am desperately trying to get into the habit of writing every single day, but as you can see, when you search for inspiration that is the time you are most likely not going to find any. Alas, here I sit, typing, breathing, stopping to take a look around my surroundings in hopes that—what? In hopes that I will be struck by a literary bolt of lighting catapulted by the same muse who inspired Rowling, da Vinci, or King? Will I look outside the floor-to-ceiling windows and find a story gliding along the cirrus clouds as they glide lazily along the robin’s egg sky? Or perhaps Icarus will swoop down from the heavens just before his wings melt in the sun in order to whisper the secret of creativity into my eager ear as his wings beat softly in the summer air. I think not.
“How vain it is to write, when you have not stood up to live.” Henry David Thoreau said that. How utterly true that statement is.
There are voices in my head that speak to me constantly, but unlike some other voices that perhaps only seek attention and want to make the evening news, my voices do not ask me to create pipe bombs in seedy basements, or take sledgehammers to innocent bystanders. No, my voices always seem to request the same thing … Tell my story. Please.
Sometimes there will only be one voice making this request and it is easy for me to handle. I can walk around the house, make myself a cup of tea, and listen intently as my character follows me around, making sure I’m seeing their story exactly as they have lived it. However, on occasion, several more voices decide to join in the fun and suddenly I find myself with an entourage of characters all speaking at once (their manners come and go). The voices become one loud, long hum, the kind of white noise you hear when you’re sitting at a crowded and popular restaurant. You are able to catch bits and pieces of conversations but only if you train yourself to focus on one at a time. Even so, you end up missing vital pieces of information that are lost on that wave of white noise.
