The Process of Inspiration

I like to keep a few beers in the fridge, otherwise it’s like I don’t want to go home sometimes. Life can be a bit depressing if you’re stuck in a one-bedroom apartment without even a TV or a radio. Because I work on the internet, it tends not to be relaxing entertainment—it’s like I’m always working, or at least looking for inspiration, and sometimes coming up dry.

I had a stint like that recently. A couple of days went by, and I had no ideas for stories. Then I stopped in at my brother’s place, had a coffee and watched TV for a while. I don’t know what it is about TV, but something struck me and I had an idea. It was one of those old war documentaries.

It’s like I couldn’t wait to go home and begin writing it. On the way, I stopped off at the park because I wanted a list of names and the plaque on an old memorial was just what I needed. So I stopped in and took a photo of one.

A couple of writing sessions later, I had a two thousand word short story, all ready to submit to the pro markets. It started off with the title, ‘Cenotaph,’ but now I’m calling it ‘In Memoriam,’ and it’s science fiction set a couple of centuries in the future.

I’ll submit that around and see how it goes. If all else fails, it can be published on this blog, and ultimately, the more strong stories I have, the more strong collections I can produce and self-publish.

New material is a good thing. If I had one good idea a day, I would be happy as far as writing short stories is concerned.

***

I was grumpy this morning, and that rarely results in any good ideas. And I had nothing. Basically, I get in the car and then get a coffee. I go for a drive in the country. I saw a few birds, and a few side-roads, and a few farms and cars going along…no big thing. It’s February in southern Ontario.

Going to see my brother, he was asleep on the couch, so I put the Weather Network on the TV and just sat there for a while. I was thinking about that one damned bird I saw. They all look the same, it’s kind of sparrow-like. There are flocks of birds. They seem to be composed of more than one species. In summer, males are in breeding plumage. In winter, they’re very drab and it’s hard to identify the species at all.

Why not use this in a science-fiction story? The aliens don’t have to be avians—certain characteristics, social characteristics, behaviour in the breeding season, the fact that they have a breeding season at all, this is good groundwork for alien-building and consequent world-building.

And all of a sudden, I remembered some dumb little four-word title I wrote in a document mysteriously called ‘Titles.’

‘The Towel of Babar.’ Now, if someone told me to write a story about a towel, owned by a guy named Babar, and make it work as science-fiction, I probably wouldn’t be able to do it. Yet some germ of the original concept convinced me to write it down, and I still vaguely remembered the idea. It was a parody of the Shroud of Turin. Ah, but now I could see things, little bits and pieces from a certain point of view—the POV of a specific but as yet un-named character.

You guessed it—I butted out my smoke, put my coffee cup in the sink, left my brother snoozing on the couch, and headed home to begin writing it up.

For me, the process of inspiration is sort of osmotic—I have to suck in something from the external world, whether from books or TV or the radio, or even just getting out of the house for a while.

To live completely without influences would be the death of any writer. I have a pretty good imagination, but it requires feeding from time to time. Not so much from other people’s books, which might lead to a tendency for imitation, which is not necessarily a bad thing in moderation. I am far more likely to get inspired and excited about an idea I had myself, and which only I could properly write.

I imitate other writers by writing too—let’s put it that way.

I would submit that any idea I once had remains in my subconscious. The challenge lies in digging it out, which is not a logical process by any means. It is intuitive and yes, creative. I think that while the apartment is often pretty quiet and mostly without distraction, that fact sometimes becomes a barrier to new ideas. The imagination needs to be stimulated with new impressions and the new thoughts they engender.

The process of inspiration is continually ongoing, and it requires new stimuli more than anything else.

Here's another perspective on inspiration.

Photo: 'Inspiration,' William Adolphe Bouguereau, (Wiki, Public Domain.)

Star Trash

In life we have to take someone else’s word for a lot of things.

I’m just taking my dear departed mother’s word for it, when I say that I am twenty-eight years old, or that my father was a man named Brendan Hartle, and that he was abducted by aliens a long time ago.

But if that is true, then he must have beaten them at their own game, just as my mom Layla said. Otherwise, I suppose I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t have the ship, and yet I can’t verify anything. I can’t prove anything either way.

For whatever reason, I was just sitting there thinking my melancholy and philosophical thoughts, when I saw this object, cruising along all unbeknownst to itself. This was a totally unfamiliar configuration. The ship and I had been evading the Imperium’s ships forever, or so it seemed. We were familiar with most configurations, but this one was all-new.

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s a probe.”

“Yes, I see that. Where did it come from, and where is it going? Can you tell me who made it?”

“Well…it’s heading towards the Centralian Empire,” The machine didn't recognize it. “Back-tracking…it came from there, that is to say it might have originated at any point on this line…”

If it hadn’t made any turns, yeah, yeah…

The cabin lights dimmed and the appropriate vectors appeared, hovering in the air before eyes, with relevant star bodies and other objects and polities displayed for my inspection.

“What do you think is out there?” The question was a little obscure, but the machine was fairly intuitive.

“Perhaps whoever built the probe?” It replied without a trace of mockery, but I have often wondered.

“All right, smart-ass, let’s go have a look at that thing.” Without further ado, I began to strap myself in securely, and prepared for up-close and personal maneuvers with another starship.

After a half a minute of study, the ship’s computer had an incomplete verdict on the data.

“It’s surprisingly big. I have no idea what they’re using for fuel. We’ll have to get closer.” It waited for my instructions.

“Okay.” My sole surviving shipmate, the computer, began edging us into an intercept vector.

***

“There’s letters or a word on it. It says ‘ESA,’ unless I’m much mistaken, and ‘Artemis,’ on the side of the thing.” Our lenses were zoomed in to the max.

“That doesn’t correspond to anything in the registry. But as you know the registry hasn’t been updated in too many years for any reasonable degree of accuracy.”

That was true enough, but we would have had to interact with an Imperial data terminal somewhere to update it, and I preferred to leave absolutely no traces of our whereabouts, at any time, for any reason. Theoretically it was possible to do it wirelessly and anonymously, but then our knowledge of anti-hacking technologies and capabilities was out of date as well. Always, caution and stealth were best.

“When will it arrive in Centralian space?”

“At this speed, in about four and a half months.”

“Okay. That’s a relief. I don’t know what to do about it…”

The thing had English lettering on the side of it. I sat there in shock. It had taken too long to sink in.

“Flight computer!”

“Yes?”

“Figure out just exactly where this thing came from.” My father had a bunch of old books, old music, and they were all lettered in the same script that was on that probe.

As we pulled up alongside, at a distance of a half a kilometre, the sheer size of it became more apparent.

It was a good three kilometres long, and maybe a third of a kilometre in diameter, and there was no way the Centralians would let that thing go sailing through their jurisdiction without challenge.

From what little I knew about Earth, based upon what my mother had told me, the people of Earth didn’t know anything about the Centralian Empire, or their clients and allies and associates.

“Well, it’s definitely unmanned.” The computer indicated its agreement.

What the hell the Earthmen were trying to accomplish with that vessel was incomprehensible. But one way or another, either they, or we, or both, were about to get in a whole lot of trouble.

***

I was trying to figure out what to do next.

“If we can shut it off, or stop it, or even redirect it temporarily, maybe we can salvage it.” That was my first notion.

Cash rules the anonymous economy.

“We’ll have to determine how and where it is controlled."  The computer had a hint of doubt in its usually emotionless voice.

This spoke volumes for its actual state of mind.

“I’ll be careful. But I was thinking of re-routing it, and that would give us more time to think it all through.” It was not to be, for just at that moment we were hailed by a squadron of roving Imperial destroyers, which was quite a shock as they really had no right or reason to be here at this moment in time.

I should have known better than to get too focused on something that wasn’t really my concern…but they almost had us with our pants down.

“Nine minutes to intercept…”

“Dummies!”

They should have just kept creeping up on us, carefully stalking us from the other side of the probe. The little wheep-wheep-wheep of the hailing alarm nattered at me from the console speaker.

“Would you like to respond?”

“Nope.” I gavethe straps a quick cinch.

“Destroy the probe.” I took manual control through the stalks and blasted us out of there at full design speed plus a little something extra just for luck.

I was pissed at them damned Imperial destroyers, but maybe we would get a crack at them guys another day.

“Target destroyed.” The computer reported. “Tracking multiple targets…out of range. Out of range.”

“Are they following?”

“No. They are investigating.”

“Damn! That’s bad news for the Earth.”

The Imperium had at least as much simple curiousity as we did, and a lot more to lose.

One thing harsh experience has taught me above all, is not to get too involved in other people’s problems.


END

Photo: NASA, Bimodal Nuclear Thermal Rocket. (Public Domain.)

For more on Brendan Hartle and Layla, read 'The Case of the Curious Killers.'

When art butts heads with commerce.

I’ve got one of those stories that sort of works at less than 4,000 words. Yet I know it’s a shitty way to end a story. By keeping it short, I can submit to the most markets, and there aren’t all that many to begin with.*

There is something to be said for the safe, sane, conventional approach—it’s the generally recognized way of doing things. Rebellion for the sake of rebellion is kid stuff. I need better motivation, or at least a long and rambling manifesto…right? I don’t feel like writing that for free. (The mark of a real pro. – ed.)

To sell the story for five or ten bucks, and have it archived in perpetuity on a website operated by a perfectly nice person, (which I cheerfully admit,) doesn’t make a whole lot of sense either. All that does is gratify my vanity, and not much else.

Giving away a big long story that I sweated over for days, just for exposure, again archived for the life of the site, is another option. Exactly how much exposure would I get?

Aren’t I the ruddy great artist guy? Or is it all about the money, then?

Yet the right thing to do is to tease it out to its natural length, because otherwise the first thing that goes is description, and the second thing is characterization. I need the plot, at a minimum, just to get to the end. Otherwise I have no idea of what happens.

This thing is so short it looks like the plot was beheaded, and at the same time, my instinct tells me that to take the basic premise to 60,000-word novel length would be to pad the thing out. Padding for word count isn’t really an option, once there’s nowhere to submit it anyway! And making it novel-sized just for the sake of a given cover price is kind of cheesy as well.

Getting a magazine sale would bring some prestige, some credibility. It would represent cash money, which is always good.

On the other hand, I could write it to its natural length and self-publish it. Say it ends up at 12,000 words. Or 32,000. We’ll call it a novella or novelette, whatever. If I sold five copies a month across a number of retailers, earning $0.60 per sale, then that’s three dollars per month. Over the course of a year, that’s $36.00 in income that I didn’t have before. Okay, after ten years, I’ve earned $360.00 from one short story that was never submitted to anyone. Let’s assume I am competent to edit it, (and I am,) and also assuming I pay nothing for cover images or formatting, (which I won’t.) Is it a good story? This is where the actual ‘talent’ comes into play. Everything else is applied effort, and a certain amount of cost-benefit analysis, (which I can do.)

Do I, ah, have any talent? I guess we’ll never know until we try, right?

Huh. This is fun! I’ve never really looked at it that way.

More than anything, I want my stories to be read. They have a better chance of that happening if they’re being published, rather than sitting on my hard-drive waiting for conditions to be perfect. And conditions, are never perfect.

So this is where art begins to head-butt with commerce. At one cent a word, my story is worth less than forty bucks, as realistically speaking I’m not ready for prime-time just yet. I’ve never made a pro sale, so, ah, why expect one now? Especially with this particular story, which I already admit is kind of truncated?

Here’s another simple equation. If the average turnaround time is two weeks, and you keep getting rejected, you can submit your story twenty-six times in a year, assuming there are that many markets in your genre. Starting at the top first, at some point, and after some time, as you go farther and farther down the list, you are in the ‘for the love’ or exposure markets. At that point, you can give it away for free or self-publish it.

*Noteworthy is the fact that Duotrope, a market listing service, which has an astonishing 4,468 listings or so, is now a paid-membership service. Yeah, if you pay for this service, it’s part of your cost-benefit analysis.

Ralan: at any given time, there are so many pro, so many semipro, so many pay and so many exposure markets. Also at any given time, anything up to one-third or even half might not be accepting submissions, due to the volume of submissions and the limits of each magazine. And some of them require postal submissions. Submitting from Canada to the U.S., this entails a $0.85 U.S. stamp for the self-addressed stamped envelope. Lately, the USPS website won’t let me complete a transaction, as they are ‘experiencing technical difficulties’ which have gone on for weeks now. Also, not all markets are science fiction, fantasy, whatever. Mystery markets seem especially few and far between. I recently wrote a 17,000-word mystery. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine wants no more than 12,000 words. The Strand, which published Conan Doyle all those years ago, requires postal submissions. Crimewave, in the U.K., same thing. I have little choice but to publish that myself as well, assuming I can create a good marketing image.

Next time someone says 'self publishing is the last resort of failed writers,' you can either laugh in their face or smack them around a bit for me. Your choice, but I promise I will be eternally grateful either way.

***

As for giving stories away, shorter is better, and flash fiction is an art form in itself.

Is it wrong to try and make money from our art?

Why not, all the best ones do. Incidentally, pointing at Vincent van Gogh and mentioning that only one of his works sold in his lifetime is a cop-out. It’s just another excuse. He never sacrificed quality for the sake of a sale, did he? But then he had the dream real bad...

I may be a little stupid, but I’m not that crazy.

Vincent is the one we all remember, isn’t he?


END

Photo: 'Starry Night Over the Rhone.' Vincent van Gogh. (Public Domain.)