Do You Have The Drive? Part Two

Jul 08, 2009 | No Comments | @andrewmarcec

zen-garden-of-abbots-hall

Inspiration, how do you get it, and when you do, what do you do with it?  This is a very tricky thing to tackle because inspiration will happen to you at any moment at any point throughout the day, even when you are sleeping.  What exactly is it?  I think that everyone has a different interpretation of what inspiration is to them.  For me, just about anything can be inspiration.  A Gothic church, a moss covered cemetery, other stories and movies, even the apple that I have with dinner.

I know that it’s inspiration because, all of a sudden, my mind starts to race as the inklings of a story come together.  I’ll start by taking that apple or that church and setting events around that object or idea.  All of a sudden I have nameless characters and hundreds of plot points are flashing through my mind as I weed out the ones that I feel are weak, or the ones that have been done before.

When I write stories and articles I almost always have a movie playing in the background.  In fact, as I type this “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” is playing.  I feel that this background noise helps me keep good pace with my writing, and keeps my mind churning, especially hearing the scores to movies.  I find that this keeps me focused on one thing at a time, as my mind as a tendency to race, and I sometimes get ahead of myself.  Also the score to a film helps me sync up and really fully visualize a scene in my head that, upon proofing, turned out to be rather drab.

That’s the trick however, inspiration ebbs and flows like high and low tide.  When you are inspired nothing can stand in your way.  However it’s very rare to have the ability to write when you are inspired, well that is if you work a day job as well.  As I sit in my cube at work, in between the calls I make, my mind is churning with ideas, and 95% of the time inspiration hits me hard.  I’ve found it best to keep a notebook or notepad that is only related to your writing close at hand.  That way you can record your story, and read it when you get home and re-spark that drive.  I can’t stress this enough, don’t stop thinking about the idea after it’s been logged!  Keep at it, play with the idea, run it through a series of checks and balances.  Constantly ask yourself, “Is this weak?” , “Has this been done too many times before?”, “What if instead of this….I did this…?”

Remember as we grow as writers we also need to become harsher critics of our own work, because there really are no original ideas, it’s how you execute them that makes them worth reading.

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