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Inspiration, Wherever I Find It - by KT Chen

10/1/2018

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I just want to take a moment and share my newfound respect for Napoleon.  He was a bastard, yes, but he was a tenacious bastard.  He was the epitome of the phrase:  If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
 
As a history teacher, I understand that Napoleon was, in a number of ways, the quintessential “bad guy.”  His entire life can be summed up in the word “war.”  Though “military” is just as apt.  And so is “passion.”  (“Unhinged” is also a likely descriptor, but let’s keep it to the positive).
 
The thing I am respecting about him, in this moment, is that he just kept going after what he wanted.  To his very ruin.  Even to the ruin of his friends, his beloved army, and his empire.  Yet, he just kept going.  (The Energizer Bunny had nothing on this guy).
 
I’ve been working on the follow-up to Ring of the Tax Collector for months.  I’ve been supremely unhappy with everything I’ve done with it.  Not because it’s bad, but because it doesn’t fit right.  It doesn’t come together like I think it should.  – I finally put it away and wrote some other stuff, out of frustration, more than anything else.  I came back to it a couple weeks ago, under the pressure of my writer’s workshop.  I’m supposed to turn in 30ish pages of *something* this coming Thursday.

No pressure.  Heh.
 
Which brings me to Napoleon.  I was thinking of him this morning as I was writing.  I was thinking about how he kept working at military strategy, the one thing he was absolutely brilliant at, regardless of the odds.  I was thinking about how he just kept trying to get what he wanted.
 
That’s the tact I’m taking with writing right now … to just keep at it until I get the story down the way I want it.
 
As a writer, I’ll take inspiration wherever I find it, and this morning I found it in Napoleon.
 
Go forth and write!

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    I write about writing, working out, my dog, being deaf, and anything else I find of interest.

    I post on Mondays, before 9 AM.

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