I've found--annoyingly--that I get many of my best ideas immediately after I turn out the light and curl up to go to sleep. I start to drift off, and BAM! Best idea for an opening sentence I've had in months. Then I have to turn the light back on, kick the dogs off the bed, and write it down...because I know I won't remember it in the morning. I've taken to texting these little gems to myself before I go back to sleep, but I think if I could somehow bottle that state of mind between asleep and awake, I could crank out a novel a week. Ha!
For example, I've been flirting with the idea of a short story about frost wraiths for months but haven't been able to get started. Then the other night, as I'm trying to fall asleep at 3 AM, it hits me: "Pearlescent moonlight bathed the snowy grounds. The wind whistled through the pine boughs and their ice-sheathed needles clinked softly in answer. The only other sound was of my boots crunching through the crust of ice before I sank knee-deep into the snow once more." A little rough, but it's the best opener I've come up with in weeks.
I'm happy to report that I've completed a blistering 7 pages of the sequel to Eyes of Stone, and I no longer hate them. Not yet, anyway. And I wrote two of them last night at about 4AM. :P
I got a lot of positive feedback to my random questions, which makes me all warm & fuzzy inside, so I'm going to call them "Creative Exercises" and make it a weekly thing. What I need from you good people, then, is lists of normal questions that I can take completely out of context and ruin beyond all hope of redemption for our mutual amusement. So if you feel moved to create a list, or should you stumble upon one out there in the internet universe (they used to frequent Myspace all the time back when it was still a relevant social media), email them to be at beckahrah @ gmail.com and I'll start compiling a list of lists. :D
Lastly, everyone go see "Drive Angry" because my childhood best friend Arianne Martin is in it! She mostly does indie movies like "The Other Side of Paradise" and "Wanda the Wonderful," but shes also done commercials (She's in that Taco Bueno commercial about the couple celebrating their anniversary) and tv shows like "Prison Break," "Crash," and "Inspector Mom." Her chasing her dreams is part of what inspired me to chase mine, so visit her site! Arianne's Home Page
I hope everyone has a great weekend!
This is me. I get all my best ideas when I'm falling asleep. Then I jump up trying to write them down exactly how they came to me so I can hold on to that magical feeling of awesomeness lol.
ReplyDeleteFor me I get a lot of my ideas once I'm actually asleep. I rarely dream about myself, it's more like movies... and I've watched some pretty good ones.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I almost always wake up before it ends so I have to figure that part out for myself =P