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.

On Hibernation

Struggling author. I’m starting to realize it’s not a clichéd phrase, after all. One envisions a scrawny male with unkempt hair in a tattered duster wearing fingerless gloves. One glove has a moth-eaten hole near the thumb. Perhaps he has a cough. He is shy. In love with the rich whale-oil heiress from across town. He writes late at night, by candlelight, after his day job hauling nets at the docks. He is published. No-one notices. He considers giving up. Maybe the merchant’s life isn’t so bad after all. Depressed, he goes to bed, only to wake from a fitful sleep with a new plot idea in his head. He scrambles to his three-legged desk, strikes a match to light the candle, and begins to scribble. There is no giving up, for good or ill. It’s in his blood. He is crazy. After all, he is a writer.

But once in a while, the writer has to eave the garret and take a break from his confinement within musty walls and long shadows, inhale the sun-filled, clean air, do some Pilates, maybe wash the dishes and pet the dogs, kiss the husband, and watch bad television, preferably reality television because well-written dramas are just too creative for a brain that needs a break.

For me, it's "Grease: You’re the One That I Want?” Who will win? I’m not sure I really care. Still, I watch it faithfully every week. Sometimes, I vote.

Haven't done much writing lately. I've lost the nerve, the verve, fell off the learning curve. (See? This is what television does to you brain.) Truthfully, I've been lazy. I've been too lazy to even read a book. But all this will change soon. My target day is May 1 -- Beltane, a time for new beginnings, the lusty month, a celebration of birth and growth. Until then, I'm working on promotion for my upcoming fantasy, Cake, as well as eating some of the gingerbread variety. With whipped cream. Homemade.

Then the Pilates.