The answer? Start work on Book Two. 

So I armed myself with all my favourite writing tools - Scrivener, my computer, a fast internet connection - everything I would need to begin brainstorming new ideas for the second novel. I sketched out the structure in Scrivener - chapters, scenes, plot points and beats. I included some brief notes about what should happen at these major points.

And then I got stuck. No obvious idea about where to start. No inspiration. No anchor. Just a blank page. 

I went off to work. Somewhere between nine and four, it hit me - why not ask ChatGPT to spin some ideas for a thriller? I figured I'd get something fairly generic, but at least it'd be something to start with.

I constructed a prompt. Fed ChatGPT some information about what I had in mind. Gave it a length, some character descriptions, a setting. As with anything, once I started to get the ideas down, and I began interacting with the AI, new ideas came to me. I just needed a starting point from which I could grow the ideas.

The thing about ChatGPT is that it is generic. It's almost as if it takes a whole lot of data and averages it out so that you end up with something middle-of-the-road.

But that was good enough for me. Once I had something - an anchor - I could start growing the ideas. And with ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner with access to vast amounts of knowledge on every conceivable topic, I found myself truly inspired.

Update

As well as developing an outline for a second book, I also created a bookcover. It's a mockup. I'll employ a bookcover artist for the final product. Here it is in the meantime.