My fans often ask me where I get the inspiration for what I write. They ask things like: "Where exactly do you get your wacky ideas? Can't you write about normal stuff? What's for dinner?" And: "Where are you hiding the psychotropic drugs?" So I respond to my mom and my wife's probing questions with this answer: I get my inspiration from everywhere and everything. Uh, plus some really, really specific stuff I can't talk to non-writers about. So after my morning bowl of Mescaline Crunchies, washed down with a pot of the world's blackest coffee, I simply open my senses to the world around me and interpret it through my personal filter to be written down later as entertainment. Now, if you're a non-fiction writer, this won't appeal to you so much. This is really wrioters only territory. This is no knock to the truth-tellers, but a how-to dissection of a wrioter's creative process. Fiction writers: we are all liars, after all. Made-up worlds spring forth from our minds, complete with characters who do not do not exist speaking dialogue that has not really been spoken and doing things that may or may not be possible in real life. That's pretty awesome.
Of course, every wrioter, being of unsound mind and questionable judgment, will create in different ways. As I've already said, simple mindfulness can give inspiration, but I subscribe equally to the idea that mindlessness may yield an even more plentiful word crop.
Below, I'm going to list some methods -- the ones that work for ME-- that may give other wrioters an edge in creating their next new world.
- Always have something to write on: I can't even count how many times I've had a brilliant idea while I'm not writing and then had no way to record it. I believed I could remember such a clever thing. Um, no, I couldn't. You shouldn't try either. It could be your iPhone, Blackberry, or a pencil and notebook. I've even called my house, knowing that there was nobody home, and left a rambling message to retrieve later. You never know when creative diarrhea will strike, so it's best to be prepared and have a receptacle handy. That is, until the Pepto-Bismol of real life (making dinner, helping the kids with homework, going to work, etc.) puts a tourniquet on the flow of your creative juices. (Sorry about all this. It turned out much grosser than I intended.)
- Keep a file of titles: I have a file on my Mac titled "Loose Stories". It's a grab bag of workable ideas for stories I've had over the years. You simply record your story title alone, or you include notes on it you can easily add to as they come to you. Don't judge your loose stories! Even if an idea or title seems stupid it could develop into something unexpected later. And the beauty is this: say you've just completed a story and you want to put it away for a while so you can revise it with fresh eyes at a later date. What are you going to write now? Check out your "Loose Stories" file! You will feel as though you've unearthed buried treasure that you hid in a drunken fit and forgot about...until now!
- Keep your muse on a short leash: We can't all go on absinthe-fueled writing benders a la Poe and Baudelaire, but fiction writers must be able to summon their muse to remain in good form nonetheless. If you have never read , "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft" by Stephen King, I suggest you stop reading this now and go read his book. In it, King reveals his best-selling methodology to us mere mortals, so that we can be successful in our own creative quest. I am paraphrasing him here for my purposes: Have a place to write, a door to close, and a ritual to get you to "that place" your mind needs to go to write. I'm lucky because I have my own study at my house and a proven ritual. 1. The kids must be taken care of and out of my realm of responsibility. I'm a stay-at-home dad with two kids 5 and under, so this must be done with careful planning. (Thanks, Mom.) 2. I like my study door closed and the shutters shut tight. I have a little USB keyboard light for my laptop when it's really black in there. 3. The right music: blasting. This is key. It's seals the cracks in my consciousness and provides an awesome soundtrack for my story. Mood, suspense, setting: they're all enhanced with music.
- The Right Music: I admit I'm a music snob and that I'm pickier about what I let enter my ears than what I let enter my mouth. The right music, for me, has to be largely without lyrics, slow to develop, and unconventionally structured. That eliminates radio completely. I have a special playlist on iTunes called "Just Writing" for exactly that. Here's some of the artists who free my brain: Animal Collective, Aphex Twin, Broken Social Scene, Mogwai, Eluvium, Explosions in the Sky, This Will Destroy You, Stars of the Lid, Isis. There are many more, but check out these artists to see what I mean and to figure our what's right for you. More on this in a future posting.
- Read, Read, Read!: Read the genre you write for and all the others in between. Creativity begets creativity. All of us wrioters are drinking from the same collective word hole so, yes, you can be as good (and better) than what you read. If you want to be absolutely sure of this, just read the junkiest of trashy novels and throwaway children's books that come out every month.
- Wriot! Wriot! Wriot!: Wriot every day, break the rules a little, have fun. Keep a journal and put anything you want in it. I sometimes clip a picture from the newspaper, glue it on a journal page, and write whatever comes to mind about it. Heck, sometimes I - gasp! - draw a picture! This is all supposed to be fun, right? Writing is the loneliest of activities. Which is weird because in the end all we want is for everyone else to read what we have written. Sorry, BUY what we have written.
As always, all this is my foolish interpretation of what we do and I'm certain you have your own. So please, share you methods with me so that I can partake of your knowledge and experience as well. Keep wrioting and good luck!
The Wrioting Fool
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