Too many writers sit around waiting for inspiration to fuel them through the course of their writing.
It just won’t happen.
Inspiration is such a small part of the writing process. The rest is hard work.
The reason so many writers fall away from their projects isn’t because they’re no longer inspired – or they’re not receiving a series of inspirations, like a string of firecrackers detonating one after another – but because they just don’t know their project well enough.
Regardless of your writing methodology, before you sit down to commit to the act of writing, you need to know what you’re writing about. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to know every word and idea. Some things will develop organically. But you need to have an intimate familiarity with your content.
If you’re writing a novel, you need to know your world and how it functions. If it’s a contemporary story, jot down all the characters and locations you think you’ll use. Give them brief descriptions and histories. You’ll find this now begins to inform your narrative and contributes to shaping the plotting. If it’s an otherworldly story, you need to know how that place functions.
If it’s an autobiography, a biography, or history of some sort, jot down all the events you’ll cover in a chronology. Determine what the story’s going to be. It’s not just a recount of events. It might be about a triumph over illness, or building a business, or migrating and establishing yourself in a new country. These are just examples, but they demonstrate the story that’ll intertwine through that chronology and give form to the structure.
If it’s a nonfiction book that’s about some sort of methodology – e.g. how to reinvent your life – bullet-point all the things you’ll cover. Look at those bullets. How many of them are main topics? How many of them should be subjunctive of the mains? For example, I might jot down, “meditation”, “breathing exercises”, “self-care”, and “walking”, and then realise instead of having four separate chapters, I should have one chapter called “Self-care”, and put “meditation”, “breathing exercises”, and “walking” as things I’ll cover in that chapter.
If you sit around hoping you can improvise it all the way, and/or that inspiration will continue to inspire, you’ll be waiting around a long time, and grow discouraged.
Your idea is a clue to a treasure you find sitting on the surface of the earth. You’ll have to do some digging to find the rest.
So get digging.