TheBanyanTree: On Writing

[NancyIee at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/14/2011 4:21:03 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
monique.colver at gmail.com writes:

"You  have to wait
>> for
>> inspiration, you can't make it  happen, it has to come organically." He 
was
>> on speaker phone so I  heard it all, and when my husband got off the 
phone
>> I
>>  said, "Yeah, you can wait for inspiration to strike, if you're a  
hobbyist
>> and don't care if you never  write."




Hobby. . . .UNLESS.   Unless you are obsessed about the  
subject/characters/story you are penning.
 
Writing to me is like a haven from the everyday, a place I go to "visit"  
people I really like, and who like me, or don't, but "visiting" them is like  
going home to a fascinating if disfunctional family. Writing, to me, is 
about  revealing, the moods, actions, lives of people no one in the world know 
but me.  Do I feel godlike that I created them?  No.  Rather, I am their  
slave-servant, reporting what they say and do.  Some characters are  
persistent, haunting me until I sit down and fill them out, and then  release them to 
do as they will within the premise and plot.
 
Outline? I never outline. I am inspired by a situation or premise or era,  
and then bring forth a cast of characters from the black hole of my 
imagination,  to populate and solve or destroy themselves in the context of the 
story. I never  know how my novels will end, until . it ends.  Will the guy get 
the girl,  will the murder be solved, will good win out over evil? No 
outline. No formula.  I merely take the characters that have been most persistent 
in haunting me, and  set them into the muddle and turn them loose.
 
But, once starting, I cannot stop writing until the end, even if it means  
pulling all-nighters, ducking out of social gatherings, putting off other  
duties. No drug is as powerful or compelling as a cast of characters with a 
plot  to chew on, when they are  on fire.  Heroin is not a hobby.   Writing 
is not a hobby.  It flows and flows, and nothing will stop it but  to sit 
down and follow it along.
 
Thus was born my first novel . .thus was born the one on which I now  work. 
 And, I must go now . .they beckon . . . . .   .