How to Move Past Inspiration and Get Your Book Written

By Caroline Donahue — THE BOOK DOCTOR

The idea for my novel hit me as I entered the loos in Hops and Barley in Friedrichshain in October of 2016. I’d been married for less than two weeks and had been on a walking tour. A side comment the guide had made during the tour had caught my attention, and it had been cooking in the deeper recesses of my mind until that moment in the toilets and bang, I had a novel.

Except, I didn’t. It’s now the middle of 2019, and this novel is much more formed than it was during that first moment, but it’s still half on the page and half churning in the laboratory of my brain and the other ethereal corridors of where books actually come from. None of us seem to know for sure quite how we do it.

But one thing I do know for certain is that flash of inspiration is far from enough.

I can remember the Kelly green of the tile in the pub, the dark walls and doors of the hallway as I walked away from a table where my husband and I were scribbling through a stack of postcards to send home like it was yesterday. Much like falling in love, we remember the first moments like they are cut out of glass.

However, both the good news and the bad is that it’s what comes after the Eureka moment that matters most.