Viral Inspiration

This past week I was at a thrift store. All kinds of interesting treasures and discarded goods filled with stories of their own when I came across a giant wood framed clock. At first, I walked right on past, took note of the depth of the frame, and then continued looking at other frames. But then I stopped, came back to the wood framed clock, and stared at it. The thought occurred to me it might be perfect for a concept I had in mind for a book trailer.

            Months before I had been working on this concept for a book trailer that was very intricate and very complex to make. The plan was to use a lot of paper and cut outs to create the art, and I figure if I do that, I could also use the paper to create some framed artwork. But the idea was never clicking. I never could quite see how it would all come together. How I could have a book trailer that is video also convert to be a piece of art hanging on the wall. Furthermore, I struggled with the flow of the visuals in the trailer, what I would show, how I would portray the concepts, how it would animate. So, I played around with some ideas and ended up putting it on the shelf because I wasn't 100% sure the concept would work. 

            But as I sat there and stared at this giant clock and its wood frame it's like I could see it all coming together right before my eyes. A piece of art that I could also turn into a trailer for this Dragon Story saga. I'm sure I looked odd staring at this old clock, it only took a few seconds to examine the condition and the few scuffs and scrapes that might need to be touched up. Most of my time was spent staring at it envisioning what it could be. I had to buy the clock.

            Of course, this all excited my mind and even after purchasing the clock and on the way home and throughout the rest of the day all I could think about is what visuals to use and how I would piece this idea to together. I started sketching out some ideas when I realized I needed to build out a slightly more robust outline to the overall saga of this dragon story concept. So, I started exploring ideas, writing out key plot lines and events, which spawned some new ideas and it turned into an avalanche of inspiration.

            It's like I couldn't write the ideas down fast enough. Ideas spawned even more ideas and they began to replicate exponentially. I had my laptop handy and would flip it open write some notes, close it, go back to house chores or other activities think of new ideas flip open the laptop write them down and I would repeat this cycle over and over throughout the next several days. It was a rush. There is something euphoric with inspiration when it all lines up and becomes crystal clear in your mind.  

This idea that seemed so vague and abstract, this trailer concept that I didn't think would work suddenly was coming together in my mind. I could see it for what it needed to be I could see it for how I could break it down into manageable sections and I could see how this trailer would become a reality. And it wasn’t only the trailer that all came together. After working through some key moments and events in the plots that I'm planning to cover in this book series, I ended up adding an additional book to the series.

Now this type of inspiration is exciting but it's also quite scary. I kept asking myself is it even possible to add another book? Am I exhausting this concept? Do I even have enough story to tell? Is this even possible? But the more I went down this rabbit hole of inspiration the more I could see it build in my mind and I knew even though I don't know all the details at this point it's the proper direction to go. This thought process also brought to light a character that originally wasn’t intended for this series, but now it had a place to live a place to serve an important role. And when you have a character that is already alive in your mind, and you place them in a story, it is so fun and inspiring to see what the character does with the events and plots you place them in. It’s when the writing really comes alive.

I know a lot of this might not make sense because I haven't even released the first book, but if my plan is to release sequels as rapidly as possible, I have to be prepared as much as possible to write these stories at a very fast pace. For me this is very exciting. I'm sure if I was a well-established author and everyone knew my name announcing a new book in this series would be a big deal. But for now, I'll leave this announcement buried here in this blog only to be discovered years down the line. But this announcement is exciting to me and that's what really matters the most.

But after this week I can't express how excited I am to be working on this story and to bring it to life. I have no idea if I'll be able to pull it off. But I know I won't save anything for the swim back.