There are two points to be made in this post: finding inspiration, and what to do with it.
You may remember back when I was completing the Wall of Writers collection and I mentioned during Madeline L’engle’s post (who, by the way, I have had a disagreement with and am not speaking to at this time) now wait, what was I saying?
Something about something you mentioned during the-
Oh right, yes. Thank you, Johnny.
I had mentioned how I was writing a short story concerning science fiction (though, arguably, it's actually fantasy fiction. There is a very fine line between the two. I believe there’s something to do with the kind of hats your characters prefer to wear). I had a little notebook that could easily fit in my pocket, quite a bit like the copy of Shakespeare’s Macbeth that my Mama studied and then bequeathed to me.
I sat, sometimes sprawled, sometimes hunched, over that little notebook for about three days in the chair that I’m sitting in right now, in a complete stupor of writing. I wasn’t allowed to plan anything or take anything back after it was down on paper. I might have even used pen. Let me check…
No, no it was pencil. But still.
The only tool I had at my disposal (aside from the pencil, of course), was a dictionary that had once belonged to two sisters, now dead. Whenever I had a moment of hesitation, I would open up the dictionary at random, pick a word, and use it. It sounds unlikely, but the story actually ended up working, and ended satisfactorily with half a page to spare for a hearty THE END.
I just love those words.
I rather think I’ll type that story out and have it published so you can read it and spot the places I was on the ‘F’ page (where you will find the words ‘ferruginous,’ and ‘ferromagnetic,’) or the ‘O’ page (where we learn a bit about having an oyez).
Using long words for the sake of using long words is usually always a bad idea (for instance, writing, “‘how enigmatic you’ve been lately,’ she sighed dishearteningly,” is MUCH
less interesting for a reader to read verses, “‘You’ve been acting odd lately,’ she said.”). But throwing in a little something extra every now and then that forces a curious soul to look it up on their phone (or in my case a dictionary) never hurt anyone. Besides, this little notebook was supposed to be a private, fun diversion, so don’t spoil it for me!
The fact that I wrote this story for myself, I think, helped me realize that I need to be a writer. If you do something for money, well, that’s fine. But not Great. Deep down inside, perhaps, everything comes down to money. That’s just not the case with me. What about you?
Look into the history of Great Artists and you’ll see that those who did what they did in order to create something worth remembering were and are the ones that are worth remembering. Food for thought.
Speaking of history, something that I hadn’t really understood until very recently is that we Americans really do have quite a few excellent minds to boast of. Charles Goodyear (1800-1860), for instance, was an American inventor of vulcanized rubber (which does not mean, as I had originally suspected, that he had created a sort of rubber fabricated out of Vulcan skin).
Your point?
No point. I just thought it an interesting tidbit.
You’ve been reading that dictionary again, haven’t you, darling?
Don’t call me darling. And yes. As a matter of fact, it helped my out of a tight place, giving me the words “hobnail” and “merocrine” right when I needed them the most.
Unused words aren’t meant to be left on shelves forever, you know. They need to be remembered, dusted off and read. Perhaps even spoken, if you dare it.
So you see, this is one of my many ways to “find” inspiration, if that is indeed what one does to get it. I’ve found that if you sit around waiting for a good idea to come in perfect form, you’re going to be waiting around until all the good ones are nipped up by somebody less deserving. You’ve got to just go at it and write. When you’ve really got something, you’ll know it. Believe me.
Until then, remember: “pelagianism, pelagic, pelargonic acid, pelargonium,” etc, etc, etc, and so forth. Make of the world what you will, and write us all something bloody worth reading about.
Spoken like a true merocrine.
One would hope so. Read well, writers.
"The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day." -Proverbs 4:18
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