People will get an awesome idea and get right to work.  Then they realize one truth.  Anything worth having takes work.  It doesn’t have to be difficult.  Suddenly, after a few days effort, they stop or quit, stating the inspiration has left them.

What the hell?

There’s a saying. “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration.”  Thomas Edison.

To illustrate this, I’m going to paraphrase an example I’ve read by Michael Neill.  Google him.  He’s pretty damn cool.

I have a friend who works at Home Depot.  They have mountains of white paint in the paint department.  How ironic.  When a customer requests blue, for example, my friend places a few drops of blue in the white, and voila, you have blue paint. If the customer changes their minds and wants purple, a few drops of red and there you have it.  Purple.  The drops of colored paint is the inspiration, but the white base is the work.

In all arts, the inspiration is usually short lived.  But your passion and work carries it to fruition.  If people expect ever-flowing inspiration, then eventually the paint turns black.

When I was writing my novel, I had a big problem.  There are three basic types of fantasies.  A professional novelist pointed this out to me:

1.    Strange toad in a familiar garden.

a.     Witches, vampires, and werewolves in the real world.

2.     Familiar toad in a strange garden.

a.     Humans in middle earth, humans in space, humans at the center of the earth.

3.     Strange toad in a strange garden.

a.     Witches, vampires, or werewolves in space.

Mine is the third type. Which just happens to be the hardest because I have to world build the strange toad and the strange garden.  It wasn’t my choice.  It’s not like I sat down and said, “Wow. This sounds fun.  Let’s take the hardest freakin’ thing and jump.”

The story came to me.  And I ran with it.  Now came the hard part.  I needed tons of ideas to create this world.  So I sat down every day, wrote, and ideas came slowly at first.  Then within a few days I was flooded with them.  A lot of other artists has described similar experiences.  I had to buy a notebook or I’d forget them, which quickly filled with disjointednuggets of gold.

Did I use all of them?  Most.

The moral?

Follow through with your flashes of genius.  You’ll never know what will come.  If you need ideas to support your work, ask for them.  They’ll come.

Vampires in space.  Hmmm.

Last night was one of those nights.  I couldn’t sleep.  No diet Coke.  No late night coffee runs.  No chocolate.  Nothing that would turn me into an insomniac.  In fact, I’ve had more nights of insomnia in the past few years than in my whole life.  Which is interesting.

My sister had a Feng Shui master come into the house.  The master saw my room and asked my sister if I was sleeping well.  My sister didn’t know.  The master masterfully suggested in her wisest of wisdom that I move my bed to another wall, turn it so my feet would point east, and my sleeping problems would be solved.

All righty then.

One day, I came home and found my bed pushed against the other wall.  At the time, I didn’t know why.  Nor did I know a Feng Shui master had wisely assessed my sleeping arrangements, using thousands of years of Feng Shui know how.

That night I lay my head down to sleep.  My feet pointed east, though I normally don’t make a note of where my feet point.  An hour goes by, and I’m like, WTF mate?  I’m still awake.  It usually takes me fifteen minutes to say hello to the sandman.

Another hour goes by.  Crap!

An hour later I’m still freakin’ awake.

I got two hours of sleep that night.  I remember because it was the start of a line of sleepless nights.  A month later my sister was kind enough to inform me of what the master had suggested.  A few years had passed since then.

I had turned up my workout up a notch yesterday.  Summer is coming so I gotta look nice for the ladies.  When I went to bed, my body was desperate for much needed rest.  An hour goes by and I’m awake.  But a few minutes later Mr. Sandman was knocking on my door.  Not only was he knocking on my door, but the floor just outside my room creaked.

I listened.

Nothing.  House was settling.

I twisted and turned, found a comfortable spot, and began to let the bits of consciousness drip away.

Floorboards creaked.  Someone was walking around the hallway.

My sister went to sleep before I did, so I knew it wasn’t her.  Hallway light wasn’t on because it didn’t creep under my door.

I sat up and my bed squeaked.

The steps stopped.

I could feel my heart hitting my chest.

Floorboards creaked again, I heard shuffling outside, and it sounded as if someone was walking on the roof.  I was surrounded!

I jumped off my bed, grabbed a katana—Samurai sword—and waited for whomever to barge through my shut door.

C’mon, man.  My hand squeezed the hilt.  I could see the path of the sword.  C’mon!

No one came in.  The steps disappeared.

I turned on the light, opened my door.  No one stood outside.  I proceeded to check the whole house with sword in hand.  There were no signs anyone was in the house.  I eased back upstairs.

Here’s the funny part.

My Samurai sword is not real.  The blade is not tempered steel.  If there were a Samurai in my house, his katana would slice through mine like buttah.  But what are the chances a Samurai would show up in my house?

Second, my fake sword is so unbalanced that if I swung and missed, it’d take me a hundred years to recover.

Third, beyond swinging the sword like a bat, my skills with a katana is like my skills of levitation.  Non-existent.

All this because my sister listened to a Feng Shui master.  And I never found the source of the ruckus.