I'm Having a Thought...

If there’s one question that seems inexorably linked to the art of writing, it’s probably this: “Where do you get your ideas?”

As with so many other questions, there isn’t one single answer, not even if you ask the same person twice. Maybe some people have an idea box that they can reach into at will and pull out fantastic, fully formed ideas. I, unfortunately, am not one of those people.

At least, not all of the time. But once in a while, if everything falls in to place just right, it’s another story entirely.

Ultimately what I’m really talking about here is inspiration, that initial spark that lights off your story. No two are alike. Whether you spend all day rubbing two sticks together to build even the smallest campfire, or strike a single match and set off a raging inferno, it all starts with that first spark, and your story is exactly the same.

One of my most wacky and funny short stories was written in about 30 minutes between classes, all in a rush, with no prior planning or preparation. I literally wrote it almost as fast as I thought it up, typing as quickly as I could so that I could get it all down before walking back out the door and probably losing the rhythm and feel of the story for good.

The sequel, on the other hand, took something like three years to write. Not because I didn’t know how I wanted it to end, because I knew exactly. I just didn’t know how to get there. It’s all well and good if you know, say, that in the end the ring will be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom where it was forged. But if you don’t have the slightest idea how in the world to get Frodo from Bag End to Mordor in the first place, then you’re not going to make much overall progress.

So just how to you get really well inspirated* in the first place, then?

Well, everyone is different, and since I’m not you, all I can really tell you here is what works for me. Luckily, for me that’s an easy question to answer, because I have absolutely no idea how I get inspired.

But one big thing in my favor is the fact that I tend to have a very wandering mind. I don’t mean that I’m never paying attention to what I’m doing, because that’s not true at all. But somewhere in the back of my mind, even—and sometimes most importantly—when I don’t want it, there’s some nugget of awareness that’s casting randomly about from one thought to another, just looking for something to latch on to.

I suspect that it’s something that developed over quite a few years in school as a child. It was never especially straining for me to do the homework and follow along. It wasn’t until taking calculus or physics classes that things started requiring some more determined focus, and by then I’d grown quite an active and detailed imagination. Not only that, but it was quite happy running along on its own while the rest of my brain kept working.

Which is why, threeish years after I wrote The Story of Aug in one frantic break between classes, I was sitting in a meeting at work and suddenly struck by exactly the right way to tie together the sequel that I’d been poking at off and on ever since. So, on a page of graph paper in the almost unreadable scrawl of a terrible office-supply-cabinet pen (pro tip: find a pen that you like using, and then always always have one around) I scribbled down a few paragraphs that encapsulated how I would finish the story. That evening, after only a little extra pondering, The Rest of the Story of Aug was finally on paper.

So let’s say you’ve got a corner of your brain set aside for random ideas. Just how do you go about actually getting something useful out of it?

The only thing that I’ve come to learn is that trying to force something out will almost never result in anything I like. The best way to counter that, I’ve found, is deceptively simple: just don’t think about it so hard. Granted, that isn’t easy, especially when you’re actually trying to write something. But sometimes there’s just no way around it, you’ve got to step away and let things percolate. If you’re lucky, something will bubble up in a few hours or days (or years) that will get you back on track again.

How do you do that, then? Most simply, I’d say to find something that takes your mind mostly off what you want to be thinking about. Not completely, just enough that you’re not obsessing over it any more. For example, in the summer I bike every day, and the resulting 90 minutes of idle brain time has been a great way to come up with new ideas. Oftentimes I’ll get back with entire plots in my head, and spend the rest of the evening writing them down.

Or you could try music. I’ve found that the right piece of music can crank the random inspirator into overdrive. Example? In my senior year in college I had an interesting thought for a space epic type of story, and after sketching out a couple of pages I put it on the shelf for future reference. Every now and then I’d scribble a few more notes or a random idea to include, but for the most part I didn’t do much with it. A full six years later, I was listening to a recent movie’s soundtrack while driving and, during one impressive track from near the end, I stopped picturing the film in my head and instead saw the trailer for my own story. Two, almost three minutes worth of music played as images and dialogue and narration unspooled in my head, almost like I was watching it already put to screen.

After that, the entire story was right there, perhaps a little fuzzy in spots but better than any outline or storyboard I could ever come up with. Since then I’ve been fleshing out the story as a 10-part miniseries. Will it ever be filmed? Who knows. But if so, no matter what else, I know exactly how the trailer will look and sound.

But I have to be careful. Music conjurs up interesting ideas, but for me those ideas then become permanently merged to that music. I can’t listen to that particular soundtrack any more without seeing that specifc idea, and the same is true for lots of other music I like. More than anything else, that’s why I don’t listen to music while I’m writing. It’s thought provoking all right, but it’s almost too good.

So after all of that, are there any, you know, useful bits here to take away? Maybe.

The most important thing is probably to remember that there’s no one way to get ideas. You’ve read a few things that work for me, maybe they’ll give you a new thought for something to try yourself. Or, maybe you inspirate more effectively under a more structured approach, setting aside the time or doing idea-generating exercises. Regardless, if you find some combination that works, go for it. There’s no one, generic, ultimate way to get good ideas, and no single place to go to find them.

Just remember, even if it feels like you’re doing nothing but rubbing sticks together, sooner or later you do get those sparks. Even better, the more you try, the better you’ll get at it, until eventually you can find the right combination of distraction, concentration, or just plain idle thoughts that can give you that inferno of ideas you’re looking for.

Jason

(*No other word is as appropriate, so thanks to Syn for this one. Feel free to enbiggen your blog any time with words I made up.)

Rain that ever-loving stuff down on me.

It is becoming increasingly apparent to me that once someone has decided to consider themselves a writer—whether or not they're any good, whether or not they have any faith in their talent—their life as a casual observer is over.
When I was in early elementary school, I read books by the truckload.  I've never been a quick reader, but at least when I was a kid, enjoying books came easy—all a book had to do to make me happy was have characters, a plot, and a puppy on the front cover.  I don't remember most of the books I read before sixth grade, probably because they were all about the same, both in my mind, and on the page. 
But I do remember the fateful day in sixth grade, during free-reading hour, when I took my book (some nameless member of that series with the adventurous alliteration…Dolphins after Daybreak, or whatever) up to my teacher and pointed to line about halfway down the page.
"Mrs. Rydquist," I said (yeah…that was a mouthful for a kid with a lisp and remedial rubber bands in her mouth) "what does this word mean?"
She picked her glasses up off her chest where they had been resting on her considerable bosom and slid them up the bridge of her nose.  "Connectio…Oh, oh, that's just a typo, Mary.  The word is supposed to be 'connection,' but you see, they've accidentally left the 'n' off."  She smiled at me and let her glasses fall back onto their king-sized bed before going back to stapling things to the bulletin board.
In that moment, the core of my very humanity was rocked.  Books could have mistakes? 
Very soon after that, I began seeing the mistakes everywhere; it started, of course, with spelling and grammar, simple things that irked me, but didn't necessarily deter me from continuing to read the book.  But then, in the summer after seventh grade when I started writing my first book, things began to go downhill.
Once I started to get a taste of the sort of choices authors have when writing books or short stories or poems or what have you, I started noticing every choice that an author made that I didn't like.  This character should have been a boy, this bit of dialogue is about three chapters too early, this expository paragraph is totally contrived and I hate it!  I hate it all!
Alright, so "hate" is a strong word.  Nevertheless, after I became a writer, enjoying stories became a chore.  I entered in to every reading wary of the potential monsters of mediocrity that I might face there, knowing that any second, the author would make a glaring mistake that would render the story impassible to my perfectionist brain.  Gone were the days when I could sit down with a book and plow through it, not noticing the places where the story deviated from my ideals. 
Thankfully, my "ideals" are not perched so high in the clouds as to keep me from reading anything but Encyclopedias for the rest of my life.  But there have been whole series I've had to stop reading halfway through because of a crippling frustration that the author should have written some key element differently.  The Halfblood Chronicles by Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey, for one.  The Dune Saga, for another.  Books that I wanted to enjoy, stories I found fascinating, but enjoyment and fascination that was cut short…simply because I am a writer.  It's not a hat I can put on and take off on a whim.  It's something I always am, for better or worse.
The loss of my ability to casually read of book and stories (and watch movies, for that matter) was not all that my life as a writer took away from me either.  Since taking up the bardic pen, I've had to give up the peace and quiet of good old American individualism, as well.  Suddenly every person I meet is a character, every bit of odd rubbish I see on the ground has an epic behind it, and every crazy dream I have I have after eating too much pork for dinner needs to be written down before it's lost to the ages, because dammit, it was inspiring, and that shit doesn't grow on trees.
Has this ever happened to you: Your friend (probably only kind of your friend…no one really close) is going through a messy break-up, or maybe there's an illness in the family, or maybe they're looking for a new job.  You know there are questions you shouldn't ask—"Do you know how many times he's had sex with her, or is it just a ballpark estimate?" or "Will your aunt have to sell drugs to pay the medical bills?" or "Are you quitting because you're a racist and your old boss was Mexican?"—but a huge part of you is dying to ask so bad, because you're sure there's a good story there. 
Or even more awkward, something bad is happening to you—your ex boyfriend from high school tells you he still loves you, even though you're already dating someone, and you realize you have feelings for both of them, or maybe you find out your brother really was adopted, just like you'd been teasing him for twenty years—and, in order to sort out your thoughts or just because you're a venter, you write about it.  But the thing you write develops from a static memoir into exciting fiction, and you can't let go of the story, even though you know you're offending all of your friends and family by writing it.
Maybe I'm alone in this.  My [non-writer] friends have often told me that I get too involved in movies and books and in the stuff I write, that it doesn't get this messy for anyone else they know.  And the funny thing is that I really wouldn't want it any other way.  I love how much energy I can get from watching a good film, or how fired up I get after a really bad one.  I love how, when I go back and read those really long venting stories, I get excited and confused all over again, like I can relive parts of my life.  I've always thought that the times I've most felt like a writer were the times I've most felt alive.
What about you? 
When has being a writer really sucked for you? 
If you could snag the copyrights to any story—book, movie, short story, poem, etc.—what would it be, and what would you do to it? 
Do you have any journal entries that turned into stories you couldn't put down?  What are you doing with those stories now?
Have a great week!

Mary (PKsDancingGIrl) 
PKsDancingGirl

Write Stuff Down

Some people that I admire love to outline and world-build.  They'll break a novel down into component pieces, working each scene out ahead of time, building the story bit by bit until the finished work just sort of falls into their hands.

Okay, so it's probably never quite that easy.  Some methods make themselves out to be--the Snowflake Method, for one, claims you can almost write a novel by accident, just by building out from the central concept or "elevator pitch."  The concept is that you just bolt on more and more material, taking the sentence to a paragraph, the paragraph to a page, but instead of doing that in the normal linear fashion--starting at the beginning and bolting on sentences until you get to the end--you build the story out from its core.  So by the third or fourth pass through, you've essentially written a beginning, middle, and end.  From there, so they say, you just flesh it out.

And, like almost all writing advice ever spewed forth, this works for someone.  Maybe even more than one person, maybe a whole lot.

I'm just pretty sure it doesn't work for me.  Virtually none of these things do, since they require you to write down things that are within the narrative flow, things that, for me, arise organically in the writing process.  More to the point, it doesn't work since, when I write things down, I tend to forget them.

Someday, I might have to develop another writing process--and I think I might, since the way I do things right now is rather slow and dependent on letting my subconscious grind away at a problem for a while until it pops out the answer into the conscious fore.  But, that has been my process for a while now--I keep mulling over scenes and settings and characters, building plot elements over a long period of time.  The novel I'm writing now has been germinating for five years, at least, and survived two failed attempts to start it, including a stalled outlining.  And, that does make this one challenging since it's a mystery, and mysteries to some degree require rather tight plotting in order to get all the elements in from the beginning.  Extensive revisions may well by my friend on this one.

Another novel, one I wrote in 2008, got its start in scenes I thought of in 1999--and these were fantasy elements at a time when I didn't want to write fantasy, when I was neck-deep in science fiction and didn't think I'd ever tell all the stories I had to tell in that futuristic setting.  And almost all of the development of those ideas occurred in my head, only meeting paper when it came time to actually write the darn thing.  Most of the ideas I have that I write down, or try to outline, end up dying on me.  If I don't take them back into my head, they'll languish there on paper or in dusty computer files, until I happen upon them again--at which point they'll be rather surprising, vaguely familiar and, sometimes, kind of stale.

That being said, I'm also coming around to the idea that every story, every novel, may have its own unique method, that what worked for this won't work for that.  But maybe I'll explore that next time.

Dave

Vacation

           As I’m writing this, I’m only been back for a couple of days from a very short little vacation.  I purposefully did NOT take my laptop along, thinking that that would force me to get out and shoot more photos, which is my primary creative outlet.  And then they asked if I would be willing to check in my carry on to make more space, and I agreed to be nice, not thinking that this put my books in the cargo hold.  So there I was, sitting by the window looking forward to a two and a half hour flight alone with nothing to do.

            My salvation came in the form of a small notebook I had tucked into my purse to hold things like my hotel reservation and emergency phone numbers.  That combined with a pencil transformed into a wonderful diversion.

            When I set out on this trip, I was fighting anxiety.  I’d travelled alone before, but those times someone else had helped plan, was waiting for me at the other end, and/or was there to catch me if I massively screwed up.  But I was determined to do it, and I did!  With a little help from the people in my head, as usual.  This time the prime candidate for alter ego was a young lady named Amelie, who at one point in her story travels half way around the world, alone, for an uncertain new job.  So I settled into my seat, and set Amie in my head, thinking that if nothing else I could daydream and collect flying experiences for her story. 

            Instead I ended up pulling out that notebook, and Amelie wrote all the way to St. Petersberg.  She wrote about how nervous she was to be taking this trip.  She wrote about what she hoped to find when she got to her destination.  She wrote about why she was leaving home in the first place.  She wrote about bubblegum. And clouds, her seatmates, how cold the floor was. Things she saw looking out that window at a land that was new to her.

            I read over everything later, when I was safely on the ground, and was amazed.  I hadn’t even known I’d known some of those things about her!   Had I known that her sister was a worrywart, and that she always ran to her grandmother for cookies and comfort? Had I realized before then how much resentment she held towards her former employer?   Maybe I had but had never needed to express it.  Maybe I hadn’t, and it had grown right then, somewhere over Ohio.

            Is there a point to this?  I’m not sure, it was just a story I wanted to tell.  But hey, if you ever get stuck, maybe this would work for you.  Have your character write a diary entry to themselves.  Outside the story, just for fun.  You might be surprised by what they tell you.


Mel

The Write Environment - - Part 1 of 2

How do you write?

I don’t mean the hows and whys of writing a story, but the physical exercise of writing. Is there a certain place you like to write? A certain time? A certain mood you like to be in? We’re all different, but one of the biggest things I have heard from others who enjoy writing is that getting started -- that is, the actual sitting down and writing -- can be one of the hardest things to do.

For a long time, I struggled with the physical act of writing and it bred frustration that made even thinking about writing seem like a chore. As somebody who loves writing and telling a good story, getting over that initial bump in the road was daunting. Over time, however, I came to realize the actual problem, which was namely, I kept trying to write in a place and time that just was not conducive to how I operate efficiently.  Once I had this realization, I started to examine what things led to that mythical “zone” of creation I enjoyed being in. For me, it boiled down to eliminating distractions and not trying to be creative if my mind and emotional state simply were not in it for the long haul.

Distractions, I think, is probably one of the biggest obstacles that we all share. Like it or not, we all have things that we have to do; chores, homework, taking care of children -- four legged and otherwise -- as well as making a living. Still, there are other distractions that get in the way that we can control:

1.) The Internet

This is probably the biggest in this day and age. It’s always a mouse-click away and it can eat hours out of the time you give yourself to write. Long gone are the days when it was you and a typewriter, click-clacking away at the blank sheet of paper. Yet, there is something very real and ideal about that typewriter and blank paper: it is you and it, nothing more. You are forced to focus on the words you are writing, it’s the pressing of keys that become words that becomes a story; you become one with the tool. Well, maybe not quite that zen, but because it’s not a computer hooked to a digital pipeline with “Look at me!” webpages and social networking, it by default demands focus.

There are two ways of dealing with this, I have found. One, perhaps the hardest of the two, is to turn off your Internet connection. Unplug. Unwind. Create. However, sometimes you do need to do research, or look up a random name for that guy who just walked into the café and accused your main character of murder, so turning your connection on and off can get a bit troublesome. It can be argued that you can make a note and come back to it later; this may very well be a good course of action for you, so don’t discount it.

It failed for me, however, so I found myself using the number two solution: full screen writing applications! These are writing applications that are for one thing and one thing only, the business of writing stories. These take up the entire computer screen, typically devoid of menu bars, style selectors, or anything else that might grab your attention. More importantly, however, is that it blocks the view of other windows and other flashing items on your screen. It’s the digital version of the blank piece of paper in the typewriter. It’s you and the words. As it should be. (I’ll cover a whole host of such applications and how to use them in part two.)

There is an important point to make about these writing applications: they are not word processors! Yes, you can use things like Microsoft Word, OpenOffice Write, and OSX Pages to write stories. It’s been done, but that is not the focus of such applications. They are meant to create actual documents that are meant to be viewed as much for their layout as for their textual content. There is a subtle difference there: what you are writing is meant to be read, words that flow from the page into the reader’s head so they can envision your brilliant story; word processors are optimized to make business documents. Full of tables, headers, lists, charts, and other mundane things you have to view at meetings. Just look at Microsoft Word, for example. The most important things for the application are visual layout options on the toolbar. This is a case of using the right tool for the job and part of the job of writing applications is to remove distractions!

2.) Noise

This is an often overlooked aspect of writing, or for that matter, any creative pursuit. Typically, your mind is going to have to be in a certain state to allow creativity to happen. Our minds are able to filter out a lot of noise, normally, but things can still creep by and grab your attention. I don’t mean music here, unless it’s in the background kind; people often find music is actually helpful in reaching that creative zone. I mean the kind of noise that tends to happen in the background.

For me, I found that having the TV on in the background was a huge no-no, since it always stole my attention even if it was a show I found uninteresting. Likewise, having too many people around typically threw me off track as well. Identifying these things for yourself will be important, not only for yourself, but also for those around you. Most of us, I’m sure, are not allowed to write in a cocoon.

One of my biggest purchases in the last couple years has a set of noise canceling ear-phones. These are the kind that through the power of magic -- or so I am told -- eliminate most of the background noise around you, even if you are not actively listening to something like music. The pair I have are wonderful and worth the money I spent on them -- with the only downside for me is that they get a bit uncomfortable after a couple hours due to them pressing against my big ol’ ears.

Likewise, finding a quiet place to write helps. A side room or even a bedroom, away from noise in the living room, can make a world of difference. Or maybe not even at home! I have been going to my local library to write, since it’s ultra quiet and has the dual benefit for making me feel guilty if I am not writing. Finding such a place is not always practical, of course, so that brings us to the last important source of noise: other people.

I can attest, there is nothing worst than someone being antagonistic to your writing time. I have no easy solutions for this -- outside of heavy usage of duct tape --  other than make sure the people butting into your creative time are aware of your desire to not be bothered while writing. Sometimes, it is very hard for others around us to understand what we are doing when we are writing on the computer. They can’t see the story going on in your mind or understand that asking about if the car if full of gas breaks your stream of steamy dialogue with that waitress in the café. Be patient and ask for it in return. Maybe your writing will someday allow them to have two cars with full gas tanks.

3.) Timing

This one is a little harder to deal with, being in the busy, go-go-go world that we live in. So much so, that I can’t spend too much time writing about it, because it’s hard to confine or give advice on it. However, I am willing to bet, most of us have a certain time of day that we do our best writing in. Sadly, for me, that tends to be around 3am; I’m a night owl by nature. Yours may be 8am or shortly after dinner. Try and find your time and see if you can schedule some writing time around those moments. Even if it is 30 or so minutes, those might be the 30 minutes you get the best writing done in. Knowing when your creative juices tend to peak is important however, so it is something to keep in mind.

Getting all these ducks to line up is going to be very hard, if not outright impossible, but each little step in eliminating the distractions, in molding your writing environment to suit your needs, adds to your ability to get your writing done. In the end, you have to control your environment and not let it control you, and this means not letting laziness get in the way; writing is work and that includes the meta-parts that go with the writing! You may not be able to have your perfect situation, but you can achieve most of it.

In the next part, I will cover some of the writing applications I mentioned above, as well as some various tools you can use to organize yourself to make the most of the time you have to write.

Randy

Research

A writer must research.  You don't always have to, sometimes you're writing about subjects you already know.  Most of the time though, we're writing about cops and robbers or stock brokers having a mental breakdown.  We write about things we have no idea about.  Generally speaking, no book published has grossly messed up facts.  So, you must research! 

Personally, as a writer I feel that research is the best part of the job.  Research is what allows us to get out of our little writing caves and participate in society.  No matter where you go, if you say the three words "I'm a writer" people will start talking.  They'll talk about an idea they had, themselves, or what they do.  You will learn more participating in the research vs. surfing the web about it.

Want to do some research on cops?  Go for a ride along, go schedule a talk with a local cop.  People are interested in helping you research.  Not only that, but in the end--everything is research.  What do I mean by that?  Simple, everything is research, everything you do can be churned out and put back into your novels.  This weekend I'm going to Chicago, a fun trip--it's not about the writing, but I can research.  Take photographs of landmarks, people watch, take notes on the feelings and what you pass while driving down the highway. 

As a writer, everything you do is research.  Everything you do is important. 

So, the next time you have writers block.  Get up.  Most people say to sit and gaze at your blank word document, the cursor blinking at you over and over again to mock you.  I'm not sure what they think you'll accomplish by sitting there looking at a blank screen growing more and more frustrated with yourself.  I say, fuck what they say: Get up.  Go out, do whatever you want to do: but make sure you keep writing in mind, otherwise you just screw yourself.  So, you leave your desk, and you go to the store.  What do you do at the store?

Shop like your character would shop.  Forget yourself, what would your main character buy?  Are they a health nut?  Go hang out in the healthy foods, buy something to prepare later still in your characters mindset.  Does your character just LOVE to eat at Applebees?  Go there, buy something you normally wouldn't.  Write notes.  Go to the park, go on a hike, and feel what your character feels.

As a writer, you can always write.  You can always work on your novel even when you have writers block. 

Research will always pay off in the end, because then after a road trip you will sit back at your desk and you'll have a ton more material than you did earlier. 

So, write that novel. 

Kate

Writers Block or Emotional Block

I don't consider myself a writer.  I've blogged (for periods of time), I enjoy twitter and Facebook, and am constantly concocting stories in my head, but beyond that I have no honest literary aspirations.  Winning NaNo this past year was awesome, and I'm sure being in Script Frenzy will be great as well, but I have a tough time diving into a new project because life gets in the way.

Today, for example, I am feeling anxious and uneasy about personal issues (yes, they deal with my boyfriend) so while the concept of writing to cope or get away from stress is a great idea its just not something my brain can handle.  When I was in school I could sit for two hours and stare at a blank Word screen, trying to find a way to start my latest essay.  Other times if I was in the right mood the paper would be done and printed within a half hour and I would still get an A.  Maybe the problem is that writing comes easily to me so its tougher to deal with set backs or writers block.  Do any of you feel like that as well?  Is this something that just flows for you (in general), or is it a fight to get the words on the page?

For me, writers block is typically not due to a lack of creativity.  Most of the time its emotional, with something clouding my objectivity and causing issues with my desire and ability to express myself clearly.  Because of this I write anything just so I can get something on paper.  Today, it's this blog post.  Other times it is an email which is pointless but still helps me express something.  During NaNo if I had a tough time breaking through something personal I would expound on the details in a scene so that the couch or the hair style or the farm was exactly as I envisioned.  These tricks help me get past myself and into the mood I need to be an author, and if nothing else it is a way to occupy time until I'm able to break through whatever emotional problems are at bay.

Good luck to you all on the challenges- I have the short one completed and hopefully will be able to tackle the longer one now that my block has been shifted to the side!

**This does not mean I run away from problems by distracting myself- just that there are times when its necessary to set aside personal issues and focus on the big picture.

--by Liz