Sudden Inspiration
Electrifying and Rare...

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.    —Saul Bellow

I heard (and I mean heard) a voice - Brit, cynical, tired, say, "Eternal life. That's what I wanted. That's what we all wanted. At the time the price seemed reasonable. A bargain even."

OK so he wants to tell me a story. I sit at the keyboard and let him type it. Then I get to do the chores of editing. By that time he's back off to wherever he came from.

Now if I hadn't sat at the keyboard right then I KNOW he'd never have given me more than the first line. True, I might have made it up after that but it would have been without his help and it wouldn't have been the same.

It seems to me there's a kaleidoscope playing on the back wall of my brain, mixing up my past and present, my dreams and my fears, into constantly shifting patterns. Most of them are a design nightmare, but every now and again the whole thing comes together. When it does, an alarm goes off and unless I'm physically prevented, I take a photo of the pattern and try to make it into something.

It could be that my experience is unusual but I doubt it. Any of you folks know what I'm talking about?     —Mike Kimera

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From Helena Settimana
I know exactly what this is like, Mike - it's what I call my Muse - a force that feels like it's outside of me that steps in for a while and writes my stories for me. It doesn't feel like me. I think I'm a tad bipolar and the "muse" is around when I'm manic - at least that seems to be the pattern. I love the feeling when a story hi-jacks my life. These days I'm just jotting down notes and hoping that the Muse's vacation ends really soon.

Heck I can write without it - but I don't feel the same urgent motivation, nor do the words come easily or creatively. My imagination is like fireworks during this time. Right now it's mostly just dark so I content myself with other things.

You put the experience so well. It's cool that you have it. You're firing on all cylinders, and it shows!

From Lisabet Sarai
This happens to me only rarely, and probably not at the same below-the conscious-level that Mike describes, but when it does, the breathless excitement is electrifying - it feels a lot like sexual excitement, in fact. Same roots?

From Bliss
I feel what you mean...here recently I have been "overcome" by a desire to write, each story is different, some nasty, some sweet, some raunchy, others romantic. It is as if these "muses" are just other aspects of ME and they have found their voices and their bodies and they want to come out and play! It's wicked, it's delicious, and when one wave has passed instead of mourning, I eagerly await the next one so I can ride it.

I only recently began committing my erotic imagination to print and have discovered that it is a very liberating and stimulating experience. I figure if I get off listening to my muse and writing the story, then it is a pretty safe assumption that it will turn some other folks on as well and perhaps inspire them to give their own inner-muse a voice...a mouth...a tongue...mmmmm. Oh, excuse me, my muse is calling on me. Gotta go, Bye!

From Elena
I wish I could say that happens to me. Most times, the closest thing I get to sudden genius is a sentence or two of dialogue that just pops into my head. I get most of my story ideas at night when I'm lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. And usually I only get vague snippets of plot. I've never had a feeling of not being myself when writing. But as I said, I kind of wish I did.

From P@
This happened to me once, and it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. About a year after I began writing erotica, I sat down one night without a clue what I wanted to write. I had a single image in my head, of a married woman meeting her lover at a cafe and her husband seeing them in the window. From there I don't know how it happened. I wrote for three hours the first night and three hours the second night, the whole time listening to the soundtrack of The English Patient. I didn't stop to edit as I went along like I always do. I just wrote and wrote and wrote.

When I stopped writing on the second night, I did a spell check and got a shiver up my spine when I discovered not a single typo in the entire story. I made one edit, right near the beginning.

The only way I can describe those two nights was as if I was taking dictation from the universe. That's what it felt like. I just let my mind go and typed whatever came to me without effort, without struggling for words, without editing myself. It was like I was channelling something. It was a feeling like nothing I've ever experienced. I have no idea what combination of mood, weather, hormones or whatever caused it. All I can say is I hope it happens again.

From M. Leo Cooper
Mike, Mike, that's your Muse speaking. You just happen to be a visual person and the "speech" comes across as visual patterns. It's a damn good thing that Muses can't sue for plagiarism, or we'd all of us be answering summonses every day of the week.

From Gary Russell
I get these one liners, most of them fade soon after I've awaken, before I can even reach for a pen and paper. I had one the other morning, about a brown bear who stole all the apples in the world. It was a powerful idea, if a little strange, and perhaps difficult to weave into erotica. My inspiration faded soon after.

Funny thing, inspiration. Where does it come from? Unanswerable, I suppose. Authors influence me. Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman have all inspired some of my most successful stories.

I love to read, in footnotes, where writers here on ERWA get their inspiration How for example, Andrew got his idea for his marvelously funny story about robotic dildos from reading an article in a newspaper, how Lesly's delightful short, "curtains" was inspired by a chance remark in parlour. And my all time favourite, Lisabet's "Sky diving" (inspired by a thread here on writers).

For myself, I've gained inspiration from reading others stories on ST. Sometimes just a line or a paragraph will set my imagination whirring.

From Jane Noel
Yes! Alas, it's all too rare. And it's one of the reasons why I try to always have pen and paper with me (big purses are useful...). Sometimes the muse strikes most insistently, and one doesn't want to miss it. As you say, sometimes all that is flitting about in the mind, memory, perception, ideas, dreams, come together, and a story wants to tell itself to you.

But it's a brief moment, for the kaleidoscope turns, the patterns change, and it's gone. I say to myself that I'll remember the line, the snatch of dialogue that sparks the whole thing, the description, the idea... But if I don't write it down, it vanishes into the ether from whence it came. Damn!

From Adhara Law
You really hit the nail on the head. These are the golden moments for me in writing. It seems like they're dictated by some kind of alignment of the planets -- I have to be in the right frame of mind, the right drive to write, and the right inspirational, creative mood, and when they do happen it's like some kind of spiritual possession.

One night I was falling asleep and in that half asleep, half awake state I "heard" the following line: "It is on the bus that she realizes her toenails are painted the same color as the walls of her childhood bedroom." I didn't know what this meant -- I sat up in bed. WHO was realizing this? Why was she on a bus? Why was this realization significant? In a flash I suddenly saw her...it was as if she was grabbing me by the shoulders and saying, "tell my story. Right now." That line became the opening line to what I still think is one of my best stories (non-erotica, "Proper Place").

From Iris
Mike, It is both a blessing and a curse. It's nice to hear your expression of the "voices" and inspirations. At times I've considered it a premonition. Dreams, and messages from the soul unexpressed. I'm happy to be in good company.

From Beth
I know exactly what you're talking about. To me, that's when I know I writing the good stuff as opposed to staring at the computer until blood comes out my forehead. For me, it happens one of two ways. The first is exactly what you described -- something just stirs out of nowhere -- often in the shower -- and I can just keep going until something interrupts me enough to break the flow. The other is a variation. I may be doing more disciplined writing and then something takes over.

For instance, I was writing this little scene once that's a bridge between two more significant scenes. This short bit was just to connect the two and give a little insight. The next thing I knew my fingers were typing a bit about this previously non-existent character who shared the same dressing room coming in and making various comments. It was perfect but I never gave a single thought to even having such a character. Everything else was roughly plotted before I started but this character came from nowhere and sort of put the cherry on top of the scene.

I love getting into those moments of flow. The trick is doing it consistently or at least more often.

From Ann Regentin
Oh, God, I hate this! It's what keeps me up until 7:00 am writing. I know that if I don't get it down, I'll lose it.

Nonfiction is a bit easier because it has a built-in imperative of its own, but fiction, that nasty, snakey thing, operates on its own timetable, which bears no resemblance to mine.

I've always said that I don't write this stuff, I channel it. I know exactly where most of my ideas come from, but I have no idea (and I'm afraid to find out) exactly who or what puts them together. It just seems to be my job to sit down at the keyboard and write the whole thing out. Either that, or I just pay waaaaay too much attention to the voices in my head.

From Sascha Illyvich
That's how my poetry comes about, honestly. Lately, most of it occurs when I'm drinking and have something I need to get out of my heart but physically can't. If I go lay down to soothe the pain I've caused myself, I get frustrated because that part can't come out and I won't remember it in the morning.

So I'll write it down then, edit it with a clear head and go from there.

Someone here taught me you can always go back and edit later, but tell the story, get the words out etc. I'm bitching cause the last sex scene I wrote for my romance novel SUCKS. It's horrible. I was on a roll though and had to get the story to go on. My Muse (I think her name is Jessica) wanted the scene to come out, wanted the story to move

From Sandaidh
Yep. Used to happen a lot, especially when I listened to the 'right' music. I have a feeling that my not being able to do what you did is a lot of the reason my muse has gone AWOL. I get the snippets like that, but just am not in the place, or at a time, where I can...indulge in them. I can jot them down, but...ends up that's all I have, a snippet, not a story.

So, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.

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