Tag Archives: writing tips

11 Facetious (And 1 Serious) Answers to the Question, “Where Do You Get Your Ideas?”

Posted on April 5, 2013 | 6 comments

11 Facetious (And 1 Serious) Answers to the Question, “Where Do You Get Your Ideas?”

Invariably a writer gets asked a question, in fact THE question:

“Where do you get your ideas?”

And as a teacher when I set my students a creative writing task there comes a glassy eyed look of vacancy that would give a vacuum cleaner a run for its money when it comes to sucking the will to live.

Let me count the ways. It’s too easy to be facetious and sarcastic but let’s travel down that well-worn trope for a while.

  1. I poo rainbows. When I wipe my bum, I have 2 or 3 ideas ready to go.
  2. The washing up. The subconscious works overtime when you get time to yourself, and you can pause for a bit.
  3. Your life story. Yes, I’ve been recording our conversations.
  4. Facebook. An open account is a gold mine for personality traits, character tics and questionable hygiene habits.
  5. I steal your dreams while you sleep.
  6. I have a unicorn scribe who records my every thought.
  7. I read the ideas left in the scraps of food left on trays in the food court. It’s like an augur divining the entrails of animals. Only greasier.
  8. I get my ideas from failed Academy Award nominees press conferences when they say, “It was an honour to be nominated.”
  9. I get fed my ideas from my best friend via carrier pigeon.
  10. I gather ideas from the broken clusters of dandelions as they float on the evening breeze.
  11. I collate Ideas from the comments section on YouTube, where the stupid lives.

But what is the person really asking? What is the heart and purpose of their question?

What they are asking is, “If I replace the empty toilet roll does that mean I get to eat the last doughnut?”

Sorry, wrong question.

The question being asked is, “Why can’t I be as creative as you?”

There is a core concept at the heart of the question: a desire to be creative yet they imagine themselves without the skills or knowledge to do so.

They are saying, “I really want to be creative but I don’t know how.”

The answer is simple. It’s one word: IMAGINATION.

It’s about exercising the ol’ grey matter and THINK.

For the non-creative person, the concept of using the imagination to develop ideas is like giving them a piece of Ikea furniture and a Phillips head screwdriver to assemble it.  You’re better off asking them to stand naked in the middle of the road during a thunderstorm with a colander on their head for protection.

For a writer and the creative person, the imagination is the most important tool to use. But you need to know how to use it, to train it, to develop it and expand it.

Train your imagination. If you’re unsure how to do it, watch children play. They imagine all the time in their play, their drawings, their stories. Learn from them. Mimic their creativity, ingenuity and imagination.

On a side note, imagination gets minimised and sidelined during the school years in favour of logic and reason, when it should be expanded, developed and encouraged.

So how should we answer the question: “Where do you get your ideas?”

Remember, this is for posterity, so please, be honest. Tell me the truth.

It starts with my imagination, but that’s a wibbly-wobbley spongey-marshmallow answer.

My perspective sparks my imagination, the way I have of seeing the world. It shapes how I see people, events, incidents, and helps me understand that the individual stories of people are important.

In truth, I look for ideas. I search for them. I track them like ants at a picnic.

I find ideas in:

  • books and poetry
  • pictures and Images
  • newspaper articles
  • conversations with friends
  • blog posts
  • tweets
  • other writers’ opinions
  • and from some of the facetious ideas I gave above

I get ideas because I actively pursue them.

I use my imagination to create scenarios and situations.

I ask “What if…?”

I ask “Why?” and “Why not?”

As Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

That’s where I get my ideas.

And now I’m off to read the comments on youtube.

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The Best Times and Places to Plan New Writing

Posted on April 2, 2013 | 3 comments

When are the best times and where are the best places to plan new writing?

Time is precious.

We all have the same number of grains of sand filtering through the hourglass each day.

Writing time is precious.

We protect and hoard our allotted (and dedicated) time to write.

But we’re all busy.

And if you’re a new and emerging writer, you fit writing into the nooks, crevasses and tiny compartments of time available between the crack of dawn and when you finally feed the door and lock the cat for the night.

So when are the best times and where are the best places to plan new writing?

There is an untapped resource in the mundane ennui of our lives. Times and places where we can let our minds wander through the cereal aisle of our minds and happily browse all the pretty colours.

Remember to carry a pen and notebook so you can write down new ideas, revelations, plots, characters.

The bathroom – Use those quiet minutes to generate new ideas, plots, characters. If you’re constipated, you can always work it out with a pen. Maybe it’s just a guy thing, but seriously, uninterrupted time is precious especially when you have children. 

Washing up – a friend of mine calls it ‘sudspiration.’ Let your subconscious compost the ideas you have. Mull over concepts for plots or allow the characters in a scene to throw around some dialogue.

Have a tea towel handy as you’ll need to dry your hands quickly to take down notes.

Hanging washing on the line – As you hang out the next load on the line, observe how you do it. Is it socks (and do you pair them or leave them on the line randomly) and underwear first? Or whatever comes to hand? Do you use the same coloured pegs for each garment or you don’t care?

Now think about how you approach a new plot. Is it similar to your washing line approach?

Use the time to plan a new plot; with each garment think of it as the next scene in your story.

In the shower – nothing like a quickie to get your mind turning over. Think about how your character would carry out their ablutions. Maybe he or she uses the face washer only for the face, or they don’t care and use it all over. What kind of shampoo and conditioner would your character use? Would your character have sex in the shower?

There is something refreshing and rejuvenating about water and the process of becoming clean. Visualise the bad ideas washed away to leave the good ideas. If a good idea slips away, hope it gets stuck in the mat of hair clogging the drain.

On the commute to work – regardless of your mode of transportation you can use the time to chunk down the massive sprawling plot into scenes.

This is a little harder if you drive to work but perhaps a dictaphone (what am I saying? Every phone these days as the ability to record audio. Use your phone instead. Forget I said ‘dictaphone’). Or train your brain to remember all the minute details (we really should exercise the ol’ grey matter a little more by developing our memory).

During the commercial break – how many plot ideas can you generate in the ad break? Make a challenge of it. If you write down 2 ideas in the first ad break, can you double it to 4 in the next?

Taking a walk – stop being sedentary. Stand up out of the chair and take a turn around the block. Get the blood moving through the body. Movement creates momentum and clarity.

Use the time to process a character’s motivation. Imagine, as you walk, the character’s movement through the plot. What is their internal and external motivation?

At any family gathering (or wherever people congregate) – watch people and their mannerisms. Listen to how Great Aunt Ethel speaks about fashion and last week’s Bingo fiasco and watch how she uses gesture and body language. Become an acute observer of human behaviour and language. Can you apply it to a character?

You’ll find your own mundane moments to compost and percolate ideas.

What works best for you?

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8 Things Writers Should Be Doing Now

Posted on March 30, 2013 | Leave a comment

8 Things Writers Should Be Doing Now

Last year I wrote about why writers can’t have nice things. It’s narcissistic and futile to whinge and moan about why the empty toilet roll hasn’t been replaced.

The whinging is partially about the changes in the publishing world and partially about our own self doubt and disbelief. It’s divisive and unproductive.

Let me reverse the focus, so we can have the nice things.

Here are 8 things writers should be doing.

1. Innovating –Why wait for the dust to settle on the ebook/digital revolution/death of the dead tree industry?

Learn all you can about publishing and go it alone or form a collective and do it together.

Innovate with form: flash fiction, short story, novella, multimedia, graphic  novel, novel.

Set up a network (blog or facebook page or similar) to encourage new and emerging writers. Pass on the information you have learned to help others along the creative road.

Stop trying to predict the next trend in literature or imitate the latest Harry Potter/Twilight/Game of Thrones/50 Shades of Blue Rinse. Popular fads in our culture are like pop music; in two years’ time you won’t be able to give a good reason why something was popular.

Those things that stand the test of time do so for a reason. That’s why we have English Literature classes.

Recognise your influences and use them to your advantage. Acknowledge the canon of literature in your genre, learn the tropes and archetypes, and study it fastidiously.  Then go and innovate.

2. Collaborating – writers are stereotyped as isolated and solitary beings. Break the pattern and work with someone on a project.

Here are four ideas to get you started:

  • gather twelve people (preferably in your genre, or for a different challenge, select participants with different generic tastes). Set some parameters and create an anthology or novella, with each participant contributing a chapter or a piece of flash fiction
  • create two characters and have them write letters to one another
  • find an illustrator and work on a comic strip, picture book, illustrated story or graphic novel
  • find a writing partner and write a series of essays about a particular topic, with each person taking the opposite position. Eg Is there such a thing as a Muse?

It may be simply for fun (like the Post Marked: Piper’s Reach project Jodi and I have been working on) and posted to your blog, or you may look for publication.

Collaborate within your genre and outside of it. You may find an area of interest you hadn’t considered.

3. Encouraging – if we do not pass on the information we have learned from one generation to the next, our legacy and inheritance will fade like cut flowers in a vase.

As writers, our aim should be to encourage new writers. It is not about being competitive but nurturing the essential artistic practices that constitute our culture.

The world needs more artists, whether their reach is to five people or five million.  Provide guidance and mentorship to new artists.

Encourage people by starting conversations with people, either via social media or in person.

Communication and encouragement is the goal, not competition.

4. Meditating – go quietly about the noise.

Learn to tune out the white noise of social media, those spruikers who shout from the street corner, standing on their stolen milk crate, yelling above the heads of the pedestrians.

Instead, seek out the wise and learned for they have quieted themselves. And when they speak, we listen. Talk with friends about your progress; don’t shout it from the street corners.

Disconnect from social media once in a while. Don’t get distracted by all the shiny things.

Go about your business of writing and let it speak for you.

5. Learning – every writer should be a learner. Each new piece of work from flash fiction to a multi-volume fantasy series, there is something new to learn.

If you have only ever written novels, write short stories. If you have only ever written flash fiction, write a novella. Each format has its advantages and disadvantages and knowing them will improve your writing.

Learn as much as you can about the technical aspects of writing: grammar, point of view, dialogue, characterisation, setting and plot.

6. Focusing – Why do we write? This is the most fundamental question a writer must answer. I believe the idea of story is why I write.

Story is the heart of community. It is the shared history of a community. It binds, strengthens, admonishes, critiques, uncovers the truth, and questions.

As writers, we are sharing the story with our community. Let’s aim to tell the story in the best way we can.

Tell me a story and I’ll remember.

7. Revering – language is a powerful tool and we would do well to revere the power of words. Delve into the history of language; absorb it like a sponge. Let your characters delight in the words they use, even when they are ugly and hateful.

Words can seduce your reader into undressing, challenge them to take up arms or slap them in the face, breaking the fragile moistness of their lip causing blood to seep in between their teeth.

Understand the alchemy when words combine to tell a powerful story.

8. Writing – never lose focus or passion for your current work in progress. You will have moments when you believe your laptop wishes to fly (and you secretly hope it transforms mid-air into Optimus Prime).

Never let social media or promotion or blogging dominate your time.

Your characters can have a nice cup of tea while you have your little petulant frenzy, but get back to what you should be doing: writing.

Writing is the means by which we speak to the world. It is our voice calling in the wilderness, telling parables, fables, myths and legends.

Leave a legacy, not a meme.

* this article first appeared at Write Anything and has been modified for appearance here.

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11 Ways to Create Momentum In Writing

Posted on March 26, 2013 | 3 comments

Creating Momentum in Writing

One of the hardest aspects of being a new and emerging writer is creating momentum in your writing; the ability to make writing a consistent part of your creative life, whether it is for starting a new project or maintaining a current work in progress.

In a new and emerging writer, the first spark of creativity produces a flurry of activity and a rush of new ideas, hastily committed to paper. Into the primordial soup the new writer throws down words in an act of creativity where worlds are created, universes explode in spiralling arms of stars and the waters are gathered into one place to separate the land from the sea.

But it isn’t finished yet. You may have only written the first three paragraphs or 500 words. Or you’ve only written the first draft. There is no rest until it is finished and you can see that it is good.

You put it aside, meaning to come back to it tomorrow, or the next day, but no later than Sunday.

However before you know it, your work in progress is languishing in the corner of the room like a forgotten object because life gets in the way: the goldfish requires a burial at sea, no one has replaced the empty toilet roll. You know, the BIG things in life.

You look at it from time to time, guilty about neglecting it, but you don’t know what to do or how to go about it. Once the bonfire of the initial creative act fades to embers, works are left unfinished.

In order to produce momentum the new and emerging writing requires practice, discipline and forming the habit of writing.

But how do you add fuel to the embers, ignite the flame and build momentum to make writing a habit?

Set Targets

Begin by setting targets.

  • a daily or weekly or monthly word count;
  • a certain number of stories or chapters written in a month, two months, six months or a year.

Keep yourself accountable by recording your progress. I use a spread sheet to keep track.

Plan To Write

Set aside time to write. Timetable it into the week where it fits for you. Or whenever you can scrounge ten minutes of spare time. Take a pen and paper to the bathroom. It’s quiet time; use it.

Plan What You Are Doing

Waiting for the right time is not going to work to build momentum. Nor is sitting in front of a blank page or computer screen and waiting for words to drop into your lap. Think about what you are going to work on: the next chapter of your novel, a new piece of flash fiction, edits for a short story or planning for your next novella.

Preparation builds momentum because it focuses your attention and goals.

Keep Writing

It is dangerous as a new and emerging writer to “wait for the right time.” There is no Muse waiting for you. Put your backside into the chair and write. Even if it is rubbish, write.

You build momentum by consistently turning up to the page to write.

Multiple Projects

You may like to have multiple projects on the go at different stages of completion to build momentum. If one project is stalled, you can move on to something else.

A word of caution: have some measure of consistency. Jumping from one project to another without continuity could make your work read like the gospels of a madman.

Minimise the Distractions

Oh look, shiny things. My attention span makes a goldfish look intelligent. I can focus, but I have to work hard at it. Try this post from Jodi Cleghorn on Destroying the Distractions.

Nothing destroys momentum like social media and inane pictures of cats.

Record Your Ideas

I carry a pen and notebook wherever I go. Each page is dedicated to a single idea to allow for notes and planning.

If I am at my computer I record ideas on a Sticky Note (Mac application) or open a new document and throw down the initial ideas, a few words or paragraphs. I usually transfer the idea to my notebook at the first opportunity to have a central location for my projects.

It builds momentum because you’re composting ideas in your head all the time so when it comes to writing, you have something to work with.

Hoard your ideas

Scrounge them from every place imaginable. Build a bank of potential story projects. Having a notebook full of ideas allows your brain to subconsciously think of them, developing the narrative. Flick through your ideas from time to time. One may have appeal and give you an opportunity to work on it.

Blog

Use a blog to record your progress, trials and tribulations as a measure of accountability. Sometimes writing non-fiction can be a break for your brain. And in the process of writing about your progress in a current work in progress, you may find a solution to your planning presents itself.

Use The Down Time

The mundane activities of life are a great way to build momentum for your writing. As I’ve said before here, the washing up is a great place for me to think through ideas. The physical activity of washing dishes allows the brain to wander aimlessly through a current project, shining a torch into the dark corners and under the couch cushions.

A new character may appear or you suddenly work out how to kill off your hero. Or you have left your hero dangling by her fingertips (literally or metaphorically) and a solution to her predicament appears in the guise of a monster truck traversing through the breakfast cereal aisle.

Finish What You Started

There is a great sense of accomplishment when a piece of writing is finished. It encourages you to look forward to the next piece.

But what happens when momentum slows down, when the bonfire of enthusiastic creativity collapses in on itself in a shower of sparks, leaving naught but coals and embers?

You are allowed to let things die down from time to time. Give yourself permission to have time away from writing. Like all creative endeavours, you need to refill your creative well. Watch a movie, read a book, take a walk through the aforementioned breakfast cereal aisle of the supermarket late one evening.

I know there are certain parts of the school term (I teach high school English) when writing is all but impossible. I make best use of the time I have available to me. At the very least, if I am not writing, I am reading, making notes, scrounging ideas for blogs or stories.

Don’t let the fire go out. Keep writing.

* This article first appeared at Write Anything

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