Inspiration in Real Time

Today I’m going to write, almost stream-of-consciousness style, about the specific moment of inspiration that hit me recently. This might serve as an example to others, of what the process

sometimes looks like, or it might just serve as a fist pump out to the rest of the universe, because it felt pretty damned good, and I’m looking to share it.

Recently I decided that I have to bend myself more toward my writing, and to the writing of this blog, and a couple other endeavors I’ve got in the works that have only been getting secondary focus from me lately. Part of my renewed commitment took the form of a resolution to always have a book in active progress, rather than resting on my laurels between books, while there is editing going on.

Currently my Infinity novel, Team Zed: Shell Game, is being edited by the great team over at Corvus Belli, for lore continuity. Every few days I get a chapter or two with some gracious notes (OK, fine, I’ll give you one example: datapads are Star Wars … HOLOpads are Infinity … so there’s a Find/Replace task ahead of me). I address those notes, tending also to reread the passages around the edits and fiddling with wording and things like that.

Normally, I wouldn’t be doing any other writing at this time. But now, I’ve decided I really need to, if I’m going to convince myself I’m taking this whole novelist thing seriously. So, what to do?

Well, I have two possible books to work on next: There’s been a lot of interest in the sequel to Legacy of Shadow, for sure. In fact, as I’ve mentioned here or there, I was in the early stages of that when my friend Pete passed away in 2020. He was the central inspiration of one of the main characters, and I had to set that aside and turn my attention to Team Zed, for my own sanity. But I think I could go back to it now. The other possibility is the sequel to Rise of the Alchemist, which came out earlier this year.

Winged Hussar have mentioned both as possibilities, but they want to see what happens with their Infinity launches before they settle on which of these I should focus on.

Normally, I would hear that as the universe telling me to take a break, there’s no reason to force things, and I don’t know which to do anyway, so clearly I can’t take first steps too soon!

Except that I can. I could, and maybe even SHOULD, have solid outlines for BOTH of those projects, so when they DO come up in the queue, I can just jump right on them!

So I determined to do just that. But which to start on, and how to nail down the story?

There are a few different ways I approach building my outlines: sometimes I start with a Beat Sheet, or a worksheet outlining the emotional pacing and arch of the story. Other times I start with a treatment, or short story-like narrative of what I’d like the book to be about. Depending on the inspiration, either is equally viable. The Beat Sheet is good when I know what I want to write about, but the story itself is still forming. On a good day, the treatment could actually write itself.

But this is the first time in a long time that I’m writing a sequel (or two). I have notes I jotted down while writing the two original books, but those are mostly signposts and reminders of breadcrumbs I dropped along the way, to make sure I include the payoffs in the sequels.

So, with all of this swirling in my head, I knew I had to do SOMETHING, but I wasn’t sure WHAT. Then we had a snow day. School was cancelled, the snow was so thick my little convertible sports car wasn’t going to be going anywhere anyway, and I had the whole day to myself.

Might have thought about painting a bunch of minis, but I’m trying to recommit, remember?

Since the fall I’ve been waking up early 3 days a week to run 3 miles. A topic for another day, but I generally love it (once I’m done), and the feeling that I’ve already done my exercise for the day, so the rest is going to be gravy.

So, on that Friday I woke up and went down to the treadmill, intending to put in my 35 minutes and then try to figure out the rest of my day. And immediately, the ideas started to flow. I knew at once I was going to be doing the outline for the Alchemist sequel first (apologies to everyone who’s been telling me they want to hear more about Marcus and friends! Their time will come!). I knew almost immediately where the story was going to begin, and how I was going to divide the points of view within the book. For those of you who have not read Rise of the Alchemist, it’s the first book I wrote in first person, but some … interesting things happen at the very end of the book that will have definite effects on the sequel… Anyway, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the narration.

Then, almost like bangles on a necklace, I started to remember characters from the first book, and they slotted right into a logical place for the sequel. I knew where Monique Dubois was, and what she had been doing in the interlude. I knew why Tillman Clay had disappeared, what he’d been doing, and what he HAD to be doing when he came back into the story (I also realized that he would be the father or grandfather of the future President of the Republic of Washington, but that’s another story). I knew that Albian Ranger Geoff Clarke had been tasked with tracking the Alchemist down, and was now faced with some serious problems in that regard, and I knew that Roger the Haitian would be lurking in the background, bullet holes in his perfectly tailored vest repaired, waiting to pounce.

I saw locations that had been mentioned in the first book that I knew had to be visited. I knew Nicholas had to see Golgotha Keep, home of Grand Inquisitor Miguel de Saville y Golgotha, Archbishop of Canaan, crouching in its fetid swamp. I knew the Empire of the Summer Moon would be closing its borders, pushing scouts and war parties into the Western Reaches, and that Nicholas would have to meet the Comanche again. I knew that would be a tough meeting, given how their last one went. And I knew, with a big smile on my face, that he was going to end up visiting Florian, perched on the very edges of the Eastern Rift, and that he was going to have to take a steamship into the Wastes, down the waterways of the Rift, on a hopeless quest that might, just might, be more fruitful than he could hope.

And best of all? I saw EXACTLY how the story was going to have to end. Where it was going to have to end, and where each of these characters, and several others, were going to have to go from there. There were still mysteries to solve, of course. How much of Golgotha was Nicholas going to experience? What did that final battle look like? How do I get the monster flying warship out of my head and into the story?

But as I got off the treadmill, I had a very solid outline of precisely what I wanted to that book to

contain. I took a quick shower, went back down to the McNerdigan’s Pub, and I started to write a formal outline. It usually takes me about 3 days to work through a fully-fleshed out scaffold like that. I was done in about 8 hours. And now? I can’t WAIT to dig into that story!

So, anyway, that’s what I was writing on that Friday. What have you been writing?

Feel free to leave a comment, or contact me, and I’ll get right back to you. Let’s get something going, shall we?

Ciao for now!

~Craig