On Inspiration and Procrastination...and Hot Men

Whenever I contemplate a new book, the first step I have to take before writing is visualize my characters. As their personalities develop, I get a general blurry image of their physical attributes, but I rely on real images to fill out the contours. Sometimes, the physical inspiration is a real person or the memory of a person, but usually, I draw inspiration from celebrities.

Secondary characters are easy—a physical picture pops clearly into my mind or if it does not, I can easily find a photo of someone that fits my fuzzy mental image. Heroines are easy, as well. The actress Jennifer Ferrin, for example, was the physical inspiration for my last heroine, Breena Murphy, in Cake, A Fairy Tale.

It’s a scientific process – I sift and sort until I find the model with the physical attributes that I need.

This is not the case with my heroes. I cannot write until I am in lust with my hero and usually, the whole writing process begins because I have a such a crush on the hero that I simply must write or simply implode. Whatever plot ideas might be floating in my mind are then bent and twisted to suit the hero’s needs.

Crushes. Puppy love. Unrequited love. Nostalgia. Love that can never be. This is what inspires me to write. No real person fills the shoes of this heroic muse. It’s lust, pure and simple, and that entity snakes into various unattainable male forms that make me fall miserably in love.

My crushes change on a weekly basis so the hero of a book is sculpted by whomever that crush might be. Sometimes, my hero is inspired by that boy I had a crush on when I was sixteen – a memory of unrequited love, doubly unattainable. Sometimes, I conjure up my husband as he was in those college days – virile, godlike, untouchable. Most often, though, it’s a celebrity that captures my fancy.

There is a catch, though. The celebrity must be in character. It’s no good to have a crush on George Clooney because well, he’s human, and gets boogers and dandruff like the rest of us. So, I pine after fictions. Musicians fall into this character because onstage, they are fantasies. Onstage, Jim Morrison was a god; offstage…well…he probably didn’t shower much.

The point of this long-winded blog is not to discuss writing inspiration. Rather, it’s an exercise in procrastination from writing. I’m stuck. I cannot picture my hero. There is no focus for that muse of lust. In fact, there is no muse. I am crushless.

For me, cleaning the house and making lists serve as lovely procrastination mechanisms. Don’t feel like cleaning. So here I am making a list of all those celebrity character crushes that usually set me off into a writing frenzy. These are off the top of my head. Any additions to the list are most welcome, male or female.

And yes, I am a dork.

1. Eddie Vedder onstage, the Ten years, during MTV Unplugged
2. Sandman (okay so it’s a comic but when drawn properly, yum)
3. Voices: Jim Morrison, Michael Hutchence, Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, Bow Thayer, Jabe Beyer, Robert Plant, Glen Danzig, Layne Staley, Andrew Eldritch, to name a dozen
4. Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in “Pride and Prejudice”
5. Dennis Quaid as Remy McSwain in “The Big Easy”
6. Viggo Mortensen as Walker Jerome in “A Walk on the Moon”
7. Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff in “Wuthering Heights”
8. Clive Owen as Arthur in “King Arthur”
9. Paul Newman as Hud Bannon in “Hud”
10. Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, “Lord of the Rings”
11. Viggo Mortensen as Clay, “The Passion of Darkly Noon”
12. Daniel Craig as Jemmy, “The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders”
13. Daniel Craig as James Bond
14. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, “The X-Men”
15. Tom Pelphrey as Jonathan Randall, “The Guiding Light”
16. Chris Cornell, “Outshined” video
17. Jude Law as Inman in “Cold Mountain”
18. Brooke McCarter as Paul the Vampire in “The Lost Boys”
19. Matthew McFadden as Hareton Earnshaw in the BBC’s “Wuthering Heights”

Next blog…lust inspiring songs for writing those sex scenes.