Topical Guide 989
Mark Dorset
“Inspiration”
Leaving Small’s Hotel, Chapter 37:
Suddenly, inspiration struck. Inspiration is one of the black boxes of the human mind, the precise workings of which are still unknown, but I suspect that the process goes something like this: two ideas grow individually to such a size that each of them begins to shudder with the great energy in it, and if they move near enough to each other, the energy arcs between them in a jolt of electromagnetic radiation sufficient to light the I’ve-got-it lamp in the conscious mind of the person to whom all of this is happening, and to make him shout “Eureka!” or something similar in his own tongue.
“What a great scam,” I muttered.
Revision
Leaving Small’s Hotel, Chapter 37:
Ray sat for a moment, mentally comparing what I had read with what he had written. Then he said, “You left out the part where I kill the guy.”
I chuckled indulgently and said, “There are enough killers in the world, Ray.”
“But won’t I be remembering — ?”
“Oh, yes. You’ll explore all those memories, Ray — in your rough drafts. Everything. All those hideous urges and heinous acts that have made your past so colorful.”
“Swell.”
“But then we will excise them in the revision process, because, to tell you the truth, Ray, they do you no credit.”
See also:
“Inspiration” TG 125, TG 447, TG 528, TG 570; and Transformation TG 78
Revision: rewriting, revising, rethinking, renovating TG 10, TG 421; Writing (and Drawing): Drafting, Writing (and Drawing): Revising TG 421, TG 862, TG 865
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