Moments of Recognition

Below is a quote from Imogen Robertson's blog on The History Girls which I like so much I've imported it here for you:

"Sometimes strange things happen when you write. Of course, when we are plotting and reasearching we are in a certain frame of mind which, perhaps, makes it more likely we will see and take notice of coincidences. We are gathering as much information as we can, and looking for the links between the pieces, the joins; we’re trying to find or invent lines that will hold all the parts together and create a story. I think when you are in that state of creative investigation your mind spots patterns it might normally miss."

It's true. The patterns are there, all the time. When you see them, it's a moment of recognition - but of course! - a rightness ...

Along the same line, I was struggling with a short story this week. I shouldn't have been taking the time but I decided to give it a day anyway. I had the voice, I had the concept, I had the word length and the intended audience, I had ... nothing. Just a lump. All day I poked at it, in an ever increasing snit (I don't have TIME to be writing you, you ungrateful hunk of prose!) but it wouldn't budge. Until, finally, in the evening, it suddenly came right. All I had to do was recognize that the bimbo was a double agent. She'd been one the whole time, but neither I nor the protagonist had realised ...

Moments of recognition. For sheer pleasure, they knock drugs and sex and rock and roll into a cocked hat.

Whatever that means.