Getting Ideas

Okay, so you want to write.  Now, what do you write about?  In all honesty, getting ideas has never been a problem for me.  It's focusing on one idea long enough to finish a whole book that I have issues with.  But I know that lots of writers want to write and just don't know what to say or even where to begin.  So I figured this would be a good topic for today's post.

Most of the time, my ideas come from dreams.  As I said in my first post, I came up with a sci-fi/fantasy trilogy because of some dreams I had that I then strung together into one storyline.  That may not help you if your dreams are normal or if you don't dream at all.  Maybe you need to watch some more scarey movies or eat more junk food before going to bed or something.  Well, another way I get ideas is from my every day life.  If you like writing outside the world of realistic fiction, do weird things happen to you?  Do you mishear people?  Do you sometimes get random calls from some guy who thinks you're his girlfriend but in fact he just has the wrong number?  Have you ever seen something strange out of the corner of your eye but when you looked back it was just a park bench? 

What if these occurrences weren't really mistakes?  What if there was a character that thought these were all accidents but in fact were part of a deeper story?  Maybe instead of mishearing people, they're actually hearing their thoughts.  Maybe that guy on the phone is really trying to warn that character about the spy watching their house.  Maybe that park bench is a transformer.  One of the reasons I love writing science fiction and fantasy novels is because you can let your imagination run wild.  If you write this genre, it helps to be a little paranoid.

If you prefer realistic fiction, do normal things happen to you?  Whether or not you think so, your life is interesting.  Seinfeld was a show about nothing but it was one of the longest running sitcoms because, in fact, real life is funny.  It can also be terribly sad, frightening, and inspiring.  If you can't think of anything to write about, start jotting down childhood memories.  Childhood is hilariously traumatic.  If you can't get something out of there to do a whole story on, you need to do some more thinking.  Anne Lamott (yes, I do quote from her a lot) suggests writing about school lunches.  She did it once and started thinking of the kid who sat alone by the chain link fence.  What was up with that kid?  What kind of family did he come from?  What did he think about all alone over there?  That's a story.

Some of my ideas come from wishing that something was real.  For instance, I'm not very good at parking, and I've often wished I had super strength, or even telekinesis so I could just lift the car and put it in a perfect position.  From that, I came up with some characters with super-hero powers who use their gifts for regular tasks.  The plotline hasn't yet taken shape, but this is how it starts.  For realistic fiction, you might wish you were rich and famous.  What might that be like?  Imagine you or your parents made slightly different decisions in life.  Where would that put you?  Write that story.

Another good way to begin writing is to come up with characters.  You don't have to put them in any world or any plot or situation.  Just think of some people.  I once heard of a book where the author started with nothing but two characters.  He had no idea where he was going with it, he just had these two, well-developed characters and he had them interact with each other.  Eventually the decisions they made led to a climax and an ending.  If you know the name of this book or author, please let me know so I can give due credit.  Anyway, that is really the purest form of writing there is.  You see, characters shouldn't be driven by the plot.  The plot should be driven by the characters' decisions.  If you can think of some characters that have real depth, it doesn't matter what you do with them, the story will be good. 

So think of someone you would want to write about.  It can be your uncle, the kid down the street, the person you wish you were or the person you would hate to be.  Or someone else entirely.  Maybe you'll just write about yourself and it will still be totally fascinating.

Finally, remember that you don't always have to have a completely unique idea to begin with.  Fan-fiction is alright.  Some best selling novels started off as fan-fiction that was then tweaked just enough to be publishable.  And even if you don't get the thing published, at least you'll be writing.

Just Write

I have literally been pondering all week about what I want this post to be about.  This is going to be my first piece of advice about writing to my readers.  So it should be good, right?  It should be something that will stay with you but also encourage you to read more of my blog and yet also summarize writing in general so that if you never read anything else from me at least you'll have this one thing.

Whoo, pressure.

But I think I finally decided.  And it's not even my own advice.  I'm taking it from Anne Lamott, who took it from Natalie Goldberg.  Quoting from Lamott's book, Bird by Bird, she said, "Someone once asked her [Goldberg] for the best possible writing advice she had to offer, and she held up a yellow legal pad, pretended her fingers held a pen, and scribbled away."

If you want to write, you have to write.  A lot.  It's not always going to be good.  In fact most of the time it's going to be really, really terrible and you'll doubt your abilities and wonder if you should go into accounting because you were obviously not put on this planet to write words.  But that's just how it goes.  I've written a ton of things that are absolutely awful.  Some of them I didn't realize were awful until someone pointed it out to me.  Others I knew were terrible but I loved the storyline anyway.

So, first piece of advice: just write.  Write anything.  It might turn out to be the worst thing ever written.  But that's okay, because you did it and you can learn from it.

I've taken a few creative writing classes (I'll talk about these in later posts), and I learned about literary theory from them.  But honestly, the thing that helped me most to discover my voice, to discover what works for me and what doesn't, to discover the problems I often have, was to just write.  It helps to have someone who can read your stuff and let you know what can be improved, too.  Otherwise you might never realize your characters are flat and you don't give enough description.  As you write and review and have someone else review as well, you'll get better and you'll settle into your niche.

In my introduction I mentioned when I was younger I wrote a lot of things that never got finished.  I don't regret starting those stories at all.  They were practice.  It was not a waste of time to start those novels, because the very act of writing helped me to write better.  And I don't regret not finishing those books.  They bored me.  And I honestly don't think I would ever want to finish them because I know what I like to write about now, and those earlier stories don't fall into that category.

You remember when you thought you wanted to be a teacher or construction worker or fireman and you spent a day or month or year shadowing or even working alongside people in that profession?  And you remember when you realized that is so not what you want to do with your life?  And then you moved on and discovered your real dream job?  That's what my earlier stories did for me.  I realized that's not what I want to write about, or how I want to write.  And I was able to put them aside and pick up a storyline and style that I did enjoy.

Now I have to figure out what to tell you next time.  Oh boy.

Introductions

I've been writing for a long time.  Not necessarily well.  My earliest short story was called, “Tweter and Twet, the little bred’s.”  It was supposed to say, “Tweeter and Twit, the Little Birds.”  They were my pet parakeets when I was about six or seven.  The only page after the cover has a very crude drawing of two birds.  Above it is written, “Tweter and Twet, I bot tham in Apirl.”  I’m sure there was going to be more after this, but like most of my works, this one wasn’t finished.
        

I must have started writing young.  Reading most likely influenced me, since I can compare a lot of the stories to children’s books I had as a kid.  There's one with a couple of calves who are trying to find their mother.  They ask tons of other animals, "Are you our mother?" and they are answered by a buffalo, a lion, and a cheetah, among others, "No, I have to eat."  Obviously, this is a legitimate excuse for not being someone's parent.  The calves do find their mom at the end, but the thing is, that story was a complete rip off of P. D. Eastman's "Are You My Mother?"  Still, although it was plagiarism, copying others helped me develop my writing skills.

All of these stories had pictures.  I either did them myself (badly) or I traced them out of How to Draw books.  I never did learn to draw well.  But the first "real" book I wrote was about wolves.  I had just visited Yellowstone with my family, and I'd become obsessed with them after reading a picture book by Jean Craighead George that explained what wolves do year round.  So I wrote a story about a young wolf growing up and all the things she struggled with.  There were no pictures, and it was 26 pages long.  That's what made it real, and made me feel so accomplished.  I was ten or eleven at the time and I bragged to all my friends about it.  And then a boy in my class said, "Yeah, I wrote a book.  It was about ninety pages."

Well, I was determined to beat him.  I was going to write something even longer than ninety pages and it would be better than anything that boy or anyone else my age could write.  I got to page seventy and got interested in a new idea for a book.  

After a few pages, I thought of another plotline, and put the former aside.  Just for a while, I told myself.  But I never went back to it.

I reached chapter two of the latest story, and couldn’t figure out what to do with it next.  I moved on with a totally new idea after that.

No, I wasn't very good at sticking with things.  Eventually I got into fan fiction in Junior High and I wrote several short stories about a character named Haika and her boyfriend Yugi Moto.  As in that kid with awesome hair from Yu-Gi-Oh!  That's right, I was that kind of girl.  Laugh if you will, those short stories, and there were many, actually got finished.  There was a backstory, there was depth, there was emotion in that character.

And then I started having dreams.  Oh, yes, I'd had dreams before that, but these dreams were cool.  There were epic battles and humans that weren't quite human and fairies and elves and virtual reality games and all kinds of crazy things.  I started fitting them together into one storyline, and then I thought, "What if I put Haika in this world?"  So at age 14 I started a sci/fi fantasy trilogy called Virtuwars (I have since changed the title to The Twin Swords Warrior).  I have been working on it ever since.

Meanwhile, I got other ideas for books.  Many of them were from dreams, some were from random ideas I had, others were from strange experiences in my life.  I've used a few, started some while still working on Haika's trilogy, and others will have to wait.

Why am I telling you this?  One, because I want you to know that I love writing.  It's been a part of me since I was a child.  Also, because I want you to feel connected to me.  Have you ever gotten stuck on a story and not known where to go with it?  Oh, so been there, done that.  Have you written an absolutely horrible book?  I wrote Yu-Gi-Oh! fan fiction, my friend.  Haika had a Millennium Diamond with an evil spirit inside that made her angry.  I know what you're going through.  Finally, I'm telling you this so you understand what this blog will be about.

In my posts, I'm going to provide writing advice and experiences I've had.  In the pages, I'm going to have poems, stories, or portions of novels I've done.  If you're a writer, maybe you'll get something out of it.  Maybe it'll make you laugh.  Maybe you'll actually like some of my stories and poems.  You can learn from my mistakes and my experiences as you write your own tales.  Or, if you're not a writer and you just want to read something funny, I'm here for that, too.

Sometimes when you write, you can't find your muse.  She's out for the day.  For me, she seems to be out most of the time.  That's when the raw stuff comes out.  It's not beautiful.  It's not inspiring.  But it's glorious all the same.  As you read my work and my writing advice and experiences, hopefully you'll see the value in  those moments.  Maybe your muse will get back from her coffee break while you're here.

Or maybe you'll just become convinced my muse is a little touched in the head.  That's okay.  I don't use her that much anyway.