Wait, There Was a Real Sherlock Holmes?

To get you ultra-ready and inspired for NaNoWriMo, literary expert Celia Blue Johnson—author of the new book Dancing with Mrs. Dalloway: Stories of Inspiration Behind Great Works of Literature —has a few behind-the-scenes anecdotes to share about those classic novels we know and love. What tale will you someday tell about the origin of your bestseller?

We've all experienced that moment of waiting for our minds to take a creative leap. With National Novel Writing Month upon us, many of you are probably spending more time in front of your computer screens, searching for an idea that will carry you from page one all the way to the end. Our heroes weren't all that different from us. They fretted. They went blank. They crumpled page after page of failed ideas. If you're stumped, I propose walking away from your computer. Most literary legends found inspiration far from their desks.

There must be something about a live audience, because writers often stumbled upon their best concepts while telling a story aloud. Maybe it is because people won't sit patiently like a piece of paper. They expect the storyteller to zip from one scene to the next. Lewis Carroll did not skip a beat one summer day when the three Liddell sisters shouted,"Tell us a story, please!" As they rowed up the River Thames, Carroll spun a tale that starred Alice, one of the girls on the boat, who, he quickly devised, fell down a rabbit hole into Wonderland. For L. Frank Baum, one story led to another. Baum was entertaining his children with an adventure when he lost track of what he was saying. His mind was eclipsed by an entirely new tale set in Oz (a name he would pull from a filing cabinet drawer labeled "O–Z"). So if you find yourself face-to-face with a blank screen, corral a few friends for an evening of storytelling.

Or try people watching. You never know where you'll discover an unforgettable character. When Arthur Conan Doyle walked into a classroom at the University of Edinburgh, he had no idea he was making literary history. Conan Doyle's professor, Joseph Bell, was a star in the medical field. Patients would walk into Bell's office and within moments he knew all about their lives, simply by using his knack for deduction. When Conan Doyle failed as a doctor, he tried his hand at writing detective fiction, and Bell was the perfect model for an eccentric sleuth (Sherlock Holmes). It's surprising to discover how many fictional icons had living counterparts. Jane Austen danced with a real Mr. Darcy at a ball months before she wrote Pride and Prejudice. Virginia Woolf was dragged to parties by Katharine "Kitty" Maxse, who served as the inspiration for Mrs. Dalloway. And the young Mark Twain used to sneak out of his house to cause mischief with Tom Blankenship, later captured on the page as Huckleberry Finn.

These literary legends have very little in common, aside from fame and one uniting thread: they were all prepared to grab hold of inspiration the moment it struck. Perhaps the best advice from the masters is to leave the computer but keep a stack of note cards (like Joseph Heller, Catch-22) or a notebook (like Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days) handy, so that you can jot down an idea wherever you are!

Look for Part 2 of Celia's series tomorrow!