I saw exactly what I needed to do to revise the lesbian western, where the problem was, what I needed to do to fix it. The whole process unrolled before me tidy as you please.
Then I woke up and lost it all.
I don't regret this - much. Since in the same dream sequence, shooting the rapids of the San Antonio River behind a bunch of anglers, using a backpack as a flotation device, seemed like the logical way to beat the bad guys to the door of the Alamo halfway up a mountain, I doubt the insights were as profound, complete, and easily implemented as they seemed at the time.
That's the trouble with relying on inspiration. It's great fun when it happens, but the opening up of my subconscious and the flowering forth of ideas, connections, and insights that I've been making without noticing them comes along with an endorphin rush that overwhelms my judgment. I don't hurry to write inspirations down anymore. The good ones hang around and the impossible, misleading, and just plain stupid ones melt away like dreams do.
Valid inspirations are the reward for doing the work day after day after day after day - the research, the daily committing of work to medium, the pointless-feeling effort to logically work out a problem that you know perfectly well, from experience, will be solved when two disparate ideas line up together while you're doing something completely different. Like the dishes.
This is why authors should do their own house and yardwork, in addition to writing daily. You've got to give inspiration a place to strike in.
I agree. The good ideas hang on like a pitbull and won't let go. The rest are like rain drops disappearing into the ocean.
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