Inspiration (in the Weirdest Places)

I was reading Moonrat's blog, and I happened to be looking over the links that go down the right-hand side, and she mentioned that a group of rats is a 'mischief.' I was thinking about how strange this was, and what other words don't really make any sense - a 'murder' of ravens, for example.

This immediately launched my mind onto a book entitled 'Mischief and Murder' and is about rats and ravens, possibly as little anthros in waist coats and top hats. Or possibly something new-age and/or post-apocalyptic, as the waist-coats and top hats has, I believe, been done to death already.

But it made me start thinking. I've always been able to find inspiration for ideas in just about everything under the sun (and quite a few things above it, too). It's generally the motivation for writing that I lack, and I'm working on that. I do this as an exercise sometimes; look around at the things in my room, or in my back yard, and build stories about them.

I'd thought, vaguely, that I would write a childrens/YA short story, for the simple fact that there's a growing market for those genres. I also think that a short story would be easier. Not because there's less work involved - I intend to work just as hard on my short stories/short novels for YA as I do on Eversong. No, the easier part comes in with the time involved. It's going to take me several months; possibly up to a year to complete Eversong, whereas I'm fully confident in my ability to produce a well-written short story/novella/novellette (note to self; study the lingo and find out what exactly it is you're writing.) within a month or two, with a few weeks between the writing and editing, rather than the full three or four months I intend to wait between Eversong's completion and revising. The reason for the immense time differences is because Eversong is my baby. I'm writing short stories/novellas/what have you for fun, and in order to establish myself as an author. I'm writing Eversong the same way people actively try to get pregnant in order to carry on their family lines. I want Eversong to be the absolute best thing I could possibly write, to date. It's going to be a serious expedition into the world of writing; my novellas/etc are more of a lark.

Which now gives off a bad impression. I'm going to take my novellas/etc just as seriously as Eversong, but I think what I'm aiming to say is that I'm not going to have as much invested in them as I do Eversong. It's not going to be a huge personal failure if they get rejected fifty times before getting published. If Eversong gets rejected fifty times, it will slay me. And then I will scrap it, and forget about it for years and years, and then go back to it and rewrite the whole thing, and I don't want that. I want Eversong within the next few years. Eversong's continual rejection will be like constant miscarriages when all you want is to carry a healthy child to full term. Depressing, but you keep trying because it means so much.

That said, I'm off to write some for Eversong, and then brainstorm my latest writingchild idea.