Inappropriate Inspiration

So, us writerly people ( I tentatively include myself there) get inspiration from all kinds of places. Agatha Christie got the inspiration for a book by overhearing someone in a bus queue ( iirc) say ‘But why on earth didn’t they just ask Evans’. I wish I could do that. E L Doctrow got inspiration for Ragtime from writer’s block. No, really he did. He sat and stared at his walls till he could take it no more, then he started to write about the walls, then the room, then the house, then he wondered what the house and its neighbourhood looked like when it was built…and then the book just kind of wrote itself. Oh, how I wish I had a book that would do that.

So inspiration struck me today. I’ve been having a knotty little problem of how to ’sort of’ resolve a row between two lovers. Well, there’s the obvious way, isn’t there? The post row bonkathon. Only I’ve never written a sex scene before. There weren’t any in the first book and if I have someone who reads that and, gods forfend, want to read the second obviously I don’t want it to suddenly be erotica. So, how to go about it? How to insinuate it all without any ‘And then Tab A was inserted in Slot B, and everyone was sweaty, a little sticky but above all happy’

So to take my mind off it I go back to reading ‘American Gods,’ by Neil Gaimen. An excellent book btw, and I love his depiction of Odin. Shame about Thor, he’s my favourite god. So there I am, reading about a zombie blowing maggots out of her nose when BOOM, it hits me. Inspiration for a really quite sweet / tender / passionate making up after a blazing row though still pretty pissed at each other love scene with very little Tab A and Slot B action.

Zombies and their nasal maggots make me think of sex scenes?

I’m starting to think I may need medication.