Claire's Inspiration
By Claire Delacroix (who also writes as Claire Cross)
© 2005 Claire Delacroix Inc. All Rights reserved
I've never had a problem with inspiration - it's the perspiration part of writing that gives me trouble. Maybe this should be about procrastination!
I have a lot of ideas, not just for characters and stories, but for everything else as well. Ideas come out of nowhere or maybe they just lurk around every corner. Some of my story ideas first appear in dreams: when they haunt me in the morning, I give them ore credibility. Some are conjured by the question "what if?, a question which is always in the back of my mind when I'm reading history books. Still other ideas grow organically: often a secondary character in one of my books unexpectedly steals my heart away, then demands his or her own book. Whenever an intriguing character shows up, I need to figure out that character's story. Some characters don't surrender their secrets very easily, and those are the characters who fascinate me.
If this sounds like an uncontrolled process, that's because it is. Imagination and the generation of ideas is a natural process, one that I think is beyond comprehension. In a way, it's like sitting on a beach, watching the waves roll in. They're each different from each other - some bigger, some smaller, some with more foam and some with less - and you can't command them to start or to stop. That lack of control doesn't make waves any less wonderful, let alone less powerful. And the beauty of ideas is that, like waves, there are always more to come. You just need to watch for them.
As a result of this wealth of ideas, the biggest difficulty for me is deciding which characters and which stories merit the investment of time and energy required to write their book. That's a hard choice and one that I wrestle with each time. It feels as if there's an entire host of characters clustered around my desk whenever I sit down to write a proposal for a new book, each one of them clamoring to have his or her story told right now. Some of them are very persuasive. They show differing levels of persistence, just like real people: there are always some giving it up in disgust and new characters pushing through the door, anxious to argue their case. There are still others who have been pestering me for years. There is, for example, a disgruntled company of Edwardian bachelors in the far corner of my office, who have been frothing to depart on their various adventures for years. They glower and me, smoke and drink while I try to ignore them. (Fortunately, it's virtual port they're knocking back with such enthusiasm, or they'd put me in the poorhouse!)
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