Irrelevant Cheetah

I have been suffering from a creative slump lately. Almost immediately after starting to take notes and plan Book 2, the creative part of my brain decided to take a vacation to who-knows-where, so I ended up with two pages of notes, a poorly sketched map (Geez, it’s hard to draw maps!) and a blank document in Micro$oft Word.

After spending some quality time trying unsuccessfully to beat my subconscious into submission, I decided to take advantage of the slump to do some reading. I love to read, especially a good fantasy, but it is an unfortunate fact that I can’t read fiction when I’m writing. As a result of me finishing Book 1 and then subsequently attempting to start Book 2 and mucking about with some half-baked short story ideas, there is a huge TBR (To Be Read) list waiting for me.

My favorite fantasy author is Terry Brooks and his Shannara series, and there’s at least one trilogy in his series that I haven’t read. Since I was having trouble writing, this past week I picked up the first book in this new series and started to read, and was enjoying reading a good story instead of having to try to figure out how to write it for a change.

Maybe my subconscious needed brain fodder. Maybe I’m not supposed to do any reading for pleasure. All I know is that at 0600 hours today my brain started gushing with ideas. The first chapter of Book 2 appeared, fully formed, floating in front of me like an image of Christ in a tortilla. Bits and pieces of sub-plots that I’ve been struggling to figure out fell into place. Plot elements I hadn’t even thought of waved at me, sat down and helped themselves to some Brie. Of course, I had no choice but to flip to M$ Word and start writing frantically and there’s been some definite progress.

But, dammit, I don’t want to stop reading! I’m halfway through the first book, it’s really good, and I want to see what happens next! I want to just sit down and read for a while. But I can’t ignore the ideas flowing, either. So I’m going to try to finish reading the series, and at the same time keep taking notes about Book 2 without actually writing it and see if I can work that way.

Bleah.