Inspiration 03/19/2014

03/19/2014

2083 words today! And I intend to work on it later tonight as well.

One thing that I’ve been discussing is the age-old question of where story ideas come from.  Some people believe in some abstract “inspiration” that just comes to them. This isn’t the case for me. I pine over settings, not stories. I think about people and cultures within the world I want to set my story, and soon the story comes out.

Inspiration to me is more like “I read/saw/played this, and it made me want to do something similar.” Science fiction, as a genre, is littered with great works inspired by great works. It’s visible in the technology that’s described most of all. How many works, after all, use a warp drive? To other people, inspiration is what “happens” that makes them think of a story idea, but to me this is more of an epiphany. Whatever you call it, I honestly believe that stories do not get written this way. Well, let’s be fair: they do. I just believe that writers who are prolific and write constantly and write well do not depend on random moments of inspiration. Mine is more of a fluctuating level of “inspiration.”

Obviously, I write every day. I’m not always innately inspired. Some days, I’m just trying to get through the writing (like today) but I still do my best to make it the best writing I can. You’ll see these “uninspired” days in my counts. On a good day, I’ll hit past 2500, as I just couldn’t stop. On a bad day? I’ll be below 2100. The writing is still good, I just didn’t particularly have the drive I might have had another day. It doesn’t mean I’m uninspired, though, it just means I’m not as inspired.

 My moments of epiphany, though, are more like problems being solved. How does character X get out of the situation I put him in when I wrote today? These ones come to me in the car or in the shower, and it just hits me. My brain is constantly hammering on in the background, trying to solve the problem and at one point, it just comes together.  Now, this blog post is rambling, so I’m going to end it here. Maybe I’ll have more thoughts on this tomorrow…

Bishop