INCOMING MESSAGE

Where do your ideas come from?

That’s the million dollar question that readers ask so often. And I still can’t answer with any degree of lucidity. Even when I reread the stories I’ve written, I wonder where those tales came from, how the words got on the page. Did I really write them?

 

Eckhart Tolle, author of Living in the Now, says that inspiration absolutely does NOT come from thinking. According to him, true inspiration arrives from the gap between, from the stillness when we are totally in the present moment—not worrying about the future, not immersed in our past, not resisting what comes.

 

Heavy stuff that I’m struggling to understand, because I know he’s right. Here’s why.

 

Every time I try to force creativity by focusing my mind on the task, I enter into a battle with myself that I ultimately lose. Oh, sure, stuff gets on the page. But it’s garbage. It’s not coming from the part of me outside of rational thought. It’s coming from what I “think” the market is looking for, or what my agent can sell, or what I imagine will bring me increased respect from readers and other writers. I freeze up and it shows on the page.

 

Now that my third Yooper mystery, Murder Talks Turkey, has hit the bookshelves (check it out at my website www.debbakerbooks.com) and I’ve wrapped up revisions on the December release of doll collecting mystery number four, I’m between contracts for the first time in years. Am I scared? A while ago I would have said, you bet. Now?  I’m loving it. This is an opportunity to do something fresh, new, exciting, different, something from my heart instead of my head.

 

So lately I’m attempting to free my mind from its limiting constraints and soar like the bird that will play a major role in my next proposal. But where and what are these magical gaps between thought? And once I find that place, will I recognize it? Can I stay there indefinitely or will I get only brief glimpses of possibilities that will elude me most of the time?

 

I have a clue. I’m pretty sure I know where this special place is, the gap where thought can’t exist to control my mind, because I’ve been there. It’s that special moment when I’m really into my story, actually living it with my characters, where it’s playing out, and I’m flowing along with the story totally immersed. My fingers on the keyboard have a life of their own. Time doesn’t exist.  I’m gone from this world, sucked into a place where anything is possible.

 

You’ve been there, too, haven’t you?

 

But as a professional writer, can I afford to wander around waiting for my muse? Not really. I have to discover a way to jump start this creative part of me that is beyond my thinking mind. And the last way to do that is to “think” it into happening.

 

I’m finding that real inspiration sneaks up on me when I least expect it. When I’m driving my car, or in the shower. Strange places and times. But I have a tiny amount of say about when some of it happens.

 

My favorite way to free myself from the past and the future is by going for a walk. I’m big into walking, especially in places where nature coexists with humanity. There, I can clear my brain of all the mundane tasks that are constantly battering me for attention. I let it go at will, like the turkey vultures overhead. (really! They like the open spaces near my home).

 

My new project began as a “plot” to write a big book. My reasoning mind had plans to mold it based on what other successful authors were writing. I wanted to follow in their footsteps, pick up as many of their crumbs as possible.  

 

Three chapters and the dreaded synopsis into my “big” book, it just wasn’t ringing true. What did I want to write if I could forget about all the external stuff like marketability? What to write? After throwing ideas around and discard each of them, I still didn’t know. But whatever it was, my goal to fit my writing into a slot, round peg in square hole, or whatever, wasn’t working. My mind sweated it out. Calculated thoughts that involved financial wisdom and an in-depth analysis of current trends were taking the fun right out the process.

 

More walks to clear my mind of destructive thinking. Searching for the gap. I continued to seek answers from my guru by listening to webcast classes with Tolle (www.oprah.com if you’re interested in watching any past classes led by Eckhart and Oprah). More walks.

 

I must have (and still must) looked like a mad woman stalking down the road, talking to myself, occasionally throwing a few comments toward the sky in case someone up there was listening in.

 

Then, finally, inspiration struck. Incoming messages dove in. And I knew those ideas weren’t coming from conscious thought. I felt excited, positively right on. I knew what I wanted to write. In fact, I had to write it.

 

Every day, I can’t wait to get to my story. The plot line isn’t cast in concrete. In fact, it morphs into something a little different every day. That’s okay. For me, insight comes slowly. It can’t be rushed. I’m changing, fine-tuning as I go and I refuse to let my rational mind establish a deadline for its completion. I’ve stopped worrying about the market and whether it will sell. I just know that I have to write it.

 

So tell me – have I descended into madness or risen to consciousness? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I might stop to ‘think’ about it.

 

Instead tell me -Where do you get your ideas?