Musings of a sleepless writer...

It’s been a long week and I’m exhausted. I spent the past hour in bed, wide awake. Forcing my eyes shut, I couldn’t stop my mind from racing. Something’s on my mind. I know that I won’t be able to get any sleep tonight unless I write…

It must be guilt that’s keeping me awake… the guilt of not fulfilling my promise to myself. Every morning as I run down the list of to-do’s on my daily agenda, I keep promising myself to carve at least half an hour of writing… but for the past two days work kept getting in the way.

Finally the week’s over. I’ve had so many thoughts since writing my last blog post. Thoughts about future blog entries, thoughts about books to read, but most importantly…thoughts about my next novel.

I have ideas that come to me that seem absolutely brilliant…I take note of them in my leather notebook. But what’s strange is that I get other ideas, completely unrelated to the previous ones, which seem like “the” idea….

Actually, thinking of ideas for a novel is like falling in love…. Every idea seems like “the one,” but then you realize it was just the illusion of another oasis on the mirage…After a while, you start giving up because you learn that it’s hopeless.

But that’s when I have faith in inspiration. When I wrote my first novel, or at least I like to consider it as such, there were signs everywhere I looked, and the story unfolded so spontaneously. And since I’ve written a novel before, I know that I could do it again…

So I’ve decided to settle on an idea, albeit might not be the best one. I’ve even chosen the characters and the setting of the novel like a painter who chooses his colors and the landscape to adorn his canvas. But I am missing the most important ingredient… the storyline.

At the end of the day, it’s the storyline that makes or breaks a novel. I’m currently reading a novel by a renowned author, who is an all-time best seller. Although I don’t necessarily admire his writing style and find his descriptions quite dry, I have to admit that what keeps me turning the pages of his novel is the plot. I’m eager to find out what will happen to the protagonist five pages later. So where does one find the storyline? From experience, this is where true inspiration comes to play. As I was writing my past novel, my surroundings were constantly flashing props I could use in the theater that had become my novel.

But it all starts on the page… One needs to be in writing mode to be receptive to these elements that constitute the storyline. This is what brings me to this blog again…

I pull up the anchor and set the sails. Only by finding the courage to aimlessly drift out to sea will I be able to stumble upon the ideas I need to get started on my second novel…I know that the wind may blow me off course, but as long as I have my eyes on the stars… I will eventually find my way to the destination that awaits me.