Query

[Alexia]

Can any writers answer me this: how do you muster the inspiration for writing? Is it a place/person/scent/colour/image? What works for you?
Personally, I have all my great ideas when I'm in the shower - it's my haven of creativity. :D

(If anyone else has questions they'd like to ask their fellow writers, please go ahead and use this thread.)

[Outcast Hero]

I think of mine when I see pictures that make fun of events, and such. :D

[Byrn]

Emotion seems to be my trigger. Whenever I'm at the exteme ends of emotion, when I'm really pissed, or happy or horny. So my writing is sporadic at best....it's not very good either.

[Enariom]

Inspiration pops into my head at the weirdest moments... But I mostly feel the same as Byrn. There's nothing like a mind in turmoil for a good song/text.

Also I get a lot of ideas for songs/lyrics after I've gone to bed at night. The sad thing is: I seldom summon up enough strenght to get out of bed and write it down/record it. I'm always like: "Nah... I'l remember it in the morning. I'm to tired to get up right now."
And what happens when I get up in the morning? GONE! :grumbles:

[Allein'd'Ashan]

hehe. i'm on the same level as En here, but i actually remember my songs when i wake up(only after a warm-up for my brain). but in general i can come up with texts as the weirdest times. i actually began on a text in my Religion and ethics class:p

[VerBATum]

Yay!! A Lexi thread!!

music gets my imagination going. i'm just too damn lazy to put them down on a lasting medium. Plus i'd forget by the time i find a pen/paper.

[Vashna]

hmm, Well I'd have to say that reading good writing sometimes gets me going, sometimes bad writing too.
Then there is people, places, movies and so on.

However mostly its people who tell me they like my work or when they react to my work the way I want them too. The best way to motivate yourself to write is to actually have people reading your work.

Now enough of my blabbering. Get back to writing slackers! :D

[Allein'd'Ashan]

The best way to motivate yourself to write is to actually have people reading your work.


i agree there, Vash!!!:D:D

a sweedish song say: "you make songs out of joy(av glädje bygger man musik)
i say: lol. you can make songs out of wrath, lust, depression(i'm experienced there:p), and so on! so joy is not the only emotion one can base the song on!!!;)

[Alexia]

*only lets three people read whatever she writes*

Ah, good answers. I absolutely understand where you're all coming from, and to keep the ball rolling, let me throw in another question: what is your favoured genre or medium?

For myself, I pull short stories. Never any good at something as a series, and all my attempts at poetry or such seem jagged and unpolished. Lyrics? I won't even go there. :rolleyes:

[Allein'd'Ashan]

i do song-lyrics. and can occasionally do poems:p

[Enariom]

Song-lyrics :D

Not that good really; I tend to get a tad mello-dramatic :p
To quote a song by me and a friend:

"I'm sitting here with my guitar;
he doesn't gently weep..."

:rolleyes:

Ah well: as long as I'm having fun, I'll keep going ;)

[Allein'd'Ashan]

I tend to have melancoly lyrics. one or two "happy" songs:p

[Enariom]

Ha! I wrote a song about that :D I'll send it to you ;) Just a sec. Have to record it first :p

[VerBATum]

no song lyrics here.

generaly when i think "writing" i think of "Story". So i guess i'm a novel-type person?

[Allein'd'Ashan]

aaah. but writing ranges from two-lined poems, to 45 pages long novels(i have done both:p)

[Vashna]

lets see, I can't write poetry and I've never tried writing a song so I guess that makes me a story person.

Personally I prefer to have stories that continue, be they short stories or a novel (and a buch of consecutive short stories make a novel so thats pretty much the same thing) and are different each time. At the moment I'm working just with fantasy, once I get it down I'll move into another genre, I really want to write a monster story at some stage (ie dracula, frankenstein etc).

[Eolyn]

Im righting a story at the moment...im probably not going to show it to anyone yet.
I got started by drawing a map of some imaginary world inside my head...once id dont that i had a responsibility to give them towns and a culture all unique and different from the others.It worked.It really helped with the plot too.

[Kalinzar]

Yeah, i did the same. Allthough i did put my map on paper because otherwise i keep changing things all the time.. But it's a nice way to start with a story i think. Btw, no one here is going to read it since it's Dutch :D ... will take me around 80 years to finish it anyway.

[Alexia]

There was this boy I knew. They say he had an addiction. A strong one. One that would most others would've paid for with their life - it got that kind of hold on a person. But his stayed around. Unlike all others, he hung on and got a level of control on things. You see, this addiction he had... well, it wasn't an addiction of a thing or a stuff... it was an addiction of a girl. This girl though, she wasn't his type. Not his type at all. Or rather the reason that she wasn't made her that she was. She wasn't the kinda girl a guy could hang on to for long - she could breeze into his life as swiftly or slowly as she liked, but she could just as easily breeze out of it - and he knew that and loved her still.

But the real confusing thing about this boy and his girl was their age difference. Some would've called him a cradle-snatcher, others would've just called him lucky, but the worst he'd ever overheard on the subject was someone calling him proper. There was less than a year's age difference between them and that was the catch because this boy had never been one for comformity or regularity.

And that's how things ended. Where the girl had picked things up in the beginning, he was the one who let them slip away in the end. For 18 years, this boy had been an individual... a trend-setter... a one-of-a-kind... so when his image was threatened, well, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, right? And so it ended.

Just

like

that

.

So this girl. This addiction. She learned to move on. She believed in time healing all wounds and trusted that the pain of loving and losing was bound to fade after a while.

But seasons gradually passed and the girl couldn't forget, despite how fervently she tried. She shared her bed with other men. She burned all the letters and gave away all the possessions. She stopped singing at her work and she began to fear the night and the loneliness it brought. She feared open spaces where couples could mingle but where she could only stand, shunned, on the outer rim of their private worlds. Looking in. Looking back. She despised what her life had become.

The runs in her stockings and the stains of mascara on her cheeks labelled her boldly as a broken girl. Her heart became cold and bitter and time had failed to heal her wounds. The life she had once had, the life she had taken for granted, was truly gone.

Just

like

that

.

But one day they found eachother again. Or rather, he found her. She was destined for France where she hoped to build a new life and leave all of the old one behind. It was her last resort. Her bags were packed, her apartment cleared. All her possessions had been sold and she was left with a small quantity of clothing, a broken heart and a broken life.

But then he appeared. At her door. His hand poised to knock just as she swung it open to leave. She looked at him and saw how he'd changed... how he'd roughened and faded all at once. She wondered why he'd come.

He looked at her and wondered how he'd ever let her go.

And so they fell back in love even though they'd never fallen out. They simply began all over again.

Just

like

that

.

So what can you do?

[Allein'd'Ashan]

Is this a true story??? it ceartainly looks like it...

[Eolyn]

Cool..I like.

Its sad and happy.My two favourite things in a book.

[Alexia]

So, where does one gather inspiration? Memories? Television? Novels? Mere crazed imaginings of a late night and a caffeine high? Personally, mine come mostly from my own head and a strong emotion.

How 'bout you?

[Alexia]

I think it's time to find a new religion?

[Tarwin Gable]

I think its much easier to write when your sad, because every emotion is more vivid and much easier to describe and explain.

[cynewolfe]

Conversation - I always listen for a turn of phrase and toy around with it for a few days. Like "The Officious Uterus" I wrote over the summer; a friend said i should write a poem about the uterus and I said, yeah, sure. Then, later, I heard someone saying something like "its not about you, its about you and us" which sounds like uterus in its own little way.

Also, I play with language alot; parallel sounds, double repetitives, all that sort of stuff. I'll imitate a particular style found in a book I'm reading at the time or encounter watching a movie. One poem, regarding two samurai clans fighting over a pair of panties, was written in your typical, overly dramatic, ungainly and rigid Japanese narrative style. That sort of thing. The whole point of my writing is to be as f-ing silly as possible without stumbling into kitsch or hipsterisms.

Drawings and photography play a part as well; a particular detail or emphasis of light. Movies, also; cinematography through words. Verbs are cameras, nouns are props, adjectives are the on-stage interaction.

Gothic poetry is dumb. >_>

['Skis]

Wow, omg, I'm posting in one of the only two threads started by Sass!

*gets all giddy-like*

[Alexia]

I've posted another thread?

[Tamuril]

Well this doesn't exactly fit because I'm referring to drawing and photography (not random nature shots, but the studio kind). But it still need inspiration, and I get mine mostly from music.

Lexi, nice stuff btw.

[ellisande]

"Writing is not a job or activity. Nor do I sit at a desk waiting for inspiration to strike. Writing is like a different kind of existence. In my life, for some of the time, I am in an alternative world, which I enter through daydreaming or imagination. That world seems as real to me as the more tangible one of relationships, and work, cars and taxes. I don't know that they're much different to each other.

"However, I write about these alternative worlds because it helps to preserve them. I'm their historian, their geographer, their sociologist, their storyteller. I write them into being. I have to say I don't care whether this is a good thing to do or not; this is just the way I am and the way I live my life."

Quoting John Marsden...exactly the same way as I approach and see writing as.

[Tidus]

*sniff* Yall getting me so emotional today, it's exactly how i see it to ellisande! *sniff*



:D

[Heartsbane]

I usually get my inspiration from watching a movie, or reading a chapter in a book, or looking at great works of art, usually battlescenes, anything involving combat or war will get my brain turning faster then just sitting and trying to write when it comes.