Inspiration found, inspiration lost

Gosh, do I hate online writing tools sometimes.

Had a rather whimsical post about where and when inspiration strikes. Lost it when I went on to publish it and WordPress decided that the “quick post’ window would rather I try and log in again.

The upshot is that I lost the post, and with it the rather inspired article about inspiration.

And the thing about inspiration: once lost, it’s rather hard to recapture, let alone do it justice by recreating it in word or deed. Poo to WordPress. Poo, poo, poo.

I’ve been struggling with a nice opening to the new book. In the midst of putting together characters major and minor, I’ve been tossing up ideas of how to start. Anyhoo, longish story short – I came up with something I liked while standing under a hot  shower this morning.

My creative juices flow the best when I’m in the shower, Lord only knows why. I do all my best problem solving, meditating, creating and praying there – most inconvenient when you hold a day job in a large corporation that demands you brainstorm now and then, fully clothed and dry. There are many theories surrounding shower ephiphanies, and I think there’s truth in all of them. There’s something about all that steam and cleansing and detoxing and oxygen that goes on in that square metre-big sanctum, to lull the brain into bouts of brilliance.

The catch – there always is a catch – is that there’s never an elegant way to capture the thought in its entirety. Because you’re a) dripping wet, and b) forcing your left brain to drudge up what your right brain concocted in an unguarded moment of whimsy.

And then there’s the elocution. Putting to paper the mind’s madness. Sometimes, there just aren’t enough words because  by the time you get to its breadth, its height, its depth… you’ve already forgotten.

Or you’ve remembered. Except bloody WordPress asks you for your password again, before making you start all over on a clean canvas. And that precious moment, whatever it was, has perished for good.

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