Why Do Great Ideas Always Occur in the Shower?

I'm paraphrasing here, but Winston Churchill was once quoted as saying, "The mind is the only part of the body that, when exhausted, can be renewed by application to an alternate task, rather than having to be rested."

You'll recall that last Friday, I ran into problems with Chapter 5 of Rubbed Out.  I wrote half the chapter, and knew it wasn't working.  The scene wasn't going where I wanted, it was boring, and I was frustrated.  Basically, it was time to walk away from the manuscript and do something else, then come back later and pick it up again.

Luckily it was the weekend, and there were plenty of fun, diverting things to do.  Taking down our Christmas tree with the help of our 5 1/2 year old daughter (which makes it almost as much fun as putting it up), checking out the NFL playoffs, visiting the grandparents for dinner, etc.  Sunday evening was here and gone before I knew it, and this morning I sat down with Chapter 5 to assess the damage.

I read through what I'd written, correcting some obvious sentence structure, word selection, and grammar things, and eliminated some dialogue in favor of exposition.  (Not too much, though.)  I felt I was more on the right track, although I still wasn't certain which direction to take one of the characters.  At this point, I laid down my pencil to shower, shave, and make a fresh pot of coffee.

What happened next happens frequently to me, and I'm at a loss to explain it.  I jumped in the shower and was lathering my face to shave (shaving in the shower may use more water but the comfort of it is a fair trade-off for having to shave several times each week, particularly in winter), and from out of nowhere, entirely unbidden, a line of dialogue popped into my head as though my "problem" character were speaking to me.  I didn't hear it with my ears, didn't hear a voice speaking or anything, but inside my head I actually saw and heard him saying the line.  And the words he spoke took the story in a different direction than I had ever imagined it going, and like a missing section of pipe in an elaborate plumbing system, it diverted the flow of the story and connected it to everything else.

I loved the idea.  Chapter 5 is now much better than I had imagined it to be, and this particular plot line is stronger, too.

This is one of the reasons I love writing.  Unexplainable things like this happen, although I suspect Sir Winston may be on to the root cause with his idea.  Regardless, events like this make one want to run up to everyone, tug on their sleeve, and say, "Hey, you have to read this!"

Tomorrow I will finish Chapter 5, and get going on Chapter 6.  Things are rolling.  I'd love to stay up and write all night but I also want to spend some time with my wife and daughter.  And that may be just what my mind needs to renew itself for the next writing session.

Hope your Monday was outstanding!  Read something today that makes you so excited you want to show it to someone else!  Thanks for reading.  -Jon