Write on, Wednesday! Novel inspiration

Yesterday, I was culling through my email and came across a blurb from Writer’s Digest.  It was something about how one knows they “just gotta” write a novel.  Well, being a writer-type person, I had a pause and read the blurb. 

Here’s what I learned:

• Write a novel if characters continue to “come” to you, whether you want them to, or not.
• Write a novel if you keep thinking about it–the twists and turns, dialogue, and scenes, etc. at odd times of the day
• Write a novel if you have a variety of chacters (more characters often = longer book; not a short-story)
• Write a novel if there are various themes that keep presenting themselves in your ideas, writing, or general life
• Write a novel if you wake up in the middle of the night with an idea for your book

So…what can one do for more inspiration? 

• I like to make photocopies of pages in books I am currently reading where the dialogue just “flowed” for me, or liked the seque.  Then I highlight and jot my own notes in the margin on how I might create a scene, dialogue, character descrption of similar ilk in my own project. 
• Even better if that passage makes me tilt my head in the manner in which the character may have, or gives me some other visceral reaction.
• I download music that represents the mood, feeling, idea, that I want to convey in my work.  I pop my earbuds in when I write.  My writing is almost always better that way.
• I stay busy.  Busy people have new experiences, producing new images, ideas and characters.  A boring life = boring writing.
• Oh, and I read.  I read a lot.  I read books that are about what I want to write about, because good reading often produces good writing. 

Back to writing!