There I was, walking around some rather pleasant countryside this weekend, when a question popped up, unbidden, in my head.
That's how most of my story ideas happen, too -- spontaneously, and usually in the most bizarre places. (The shower in the house I lived in two addresses ago was a particularly productive locale. For some reason, I've not found a shower since that has worked so well.) The challenge, for me, is to jot the ideas down before I forget them. Only later on will I tease them out and, hopefully, make something sensible out of them.
I write in fits and starts. This is partly determined by how Real Life is treating me at the time. It is also determined by how inspired I am feeling. If I'm not in a creative frame of mind, it is next to impossible for me to force the words to come, no matter how much I want them to.
And yet... There are other people here who seem to work in a much more regular, disciplined fashion. I'm in awe, for example, at Wendy and Kaethel for producing those wonderful birthday fics, and producing them to deadline.
So, as I said at the beginning of this post, a question popped into my head. Here it is, broken down into more coherent bit-sized chunks:
Do you feel as though you can sit down and write to order, when and where you want? Or do you write when the muse demands it?
Or, as I put it in the topic title: do you write to order, or are you ordered to write?
Chris (who is very curious)
