Taming Inspiration

- by ria, on Wednesday, 8th December 2010, 6:36pm

I was reading an article about creating articles recently, where the writer said he can only write when he’s inspired. He gets an idea and if he doesn’t go with it straight away it fizzles and he stops working on it. He said he’s so driven by this wave of inspiration that if he stops in the middle, he can’t continue when he gets back to it because the inspiration is gone.

I completely understand where he is coming from, but I don’t agree with him. I used to be like him, waiting for inspiration and once it hit, sitting down for a 7 /8 / 12 hour stretch to try to get the whole story (or drawing, it used happen a lot with drawings) done before I had to stop working on it for the night. Usually if I didn’t get the piece finished by then, it never got finished. I get the impression a lot of young writers work this way.

The bad news: it doesn’t work. If you want to write a novel, you have to be able to take the inspiration and tame it so that you can use it whenever you need it. You must be able to draw that creative / excited energy out for the entire length of writing the novel, which could be a year or more. Any published author will tell you that writing a novel takes persistence and a strict schedule more than inspiration. That flash of brilliance is just enough to get you started, it’s up to you to take up the idea and carry it through to completion.

‘But how do I do that?’ you ask. Self-discipline, a good writing schedule and deep understanding of your story and characters helps. Really, you are the only one who can answer the question. I guess you need to ask yourself how much your story means to you, how strong is your desire to finish it. For me, I want to be a writer. I’ve wanted it for a long, long time. That need to be published is what keeps me going; you have to figure out what drives you, and use that to push yourself along when the inspiration wears off.

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category: thoughts, writing

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A Bit About My Writing

- by ria, on Wednesday, 20th October 2010, 11:46am

I’ve mentioned the things I’m working on in other posts, but I figured I should dedicate an entry to getting everything straight. Let’s start with what I’m working on right now.

For the last few years, I’ve been writing a fantasy that centres around Zachery and his attempts to save the world from itself. It’s rather magic-heavy, and I like to think it’s a pretty fast paced adventure.

Artificer

I started writing it the summer I finished college (2006). I used the snowflake method to draw up progressively longer outlines. The outline I ended up working from was 23 pages, and included headings like POV Character, Characters Present, emotional angle, description, chapter number. It was divided into 80 scenes, or so. November of that year I started writing draft 1 and by the end of the month I had 55,000 words. (Thank you NaNoWriMo.) It took me a full two years to write the other 70,000 words. (One year of that involved travelling around the world.)

April of 2008, I started editing the horrid mess that was the first draft of my book. It was called The Fall back then. The Fall is a horribly cliché title, so you can imagine what the story was like. Not wanting to face a rewrite (and not really understanding that I needed to rewrite) I messed around with it a bit, tweaking paragraphs, changing a few things here and there.

By September of 2009, I had made very little progress. I sat down one day and made a schedule for the next 6 months. I wanted a good story by March 2010. One that was unique, exciting, infinitely better than what I had. Even though it had taken me a year and a half to face the fact that I needed to rewrite most of the book, it was the best decision I made. March came around and I had something better. Not amazing yet, but good. The feedback I got made me face the problems that still existed. So, I took another 3 months and came out with draft 3.

I’m now on draft 3.2 and have a query letter that I’m still not happy with. I haven’t sent it out to any agents yet, because it makes the book sound boring. So, that’s my current situation.

Familiar

When I was still in college, I had this idea for a short story. Two girls whose lives get really strange when a demon shows up at their door. I imagined it would be about 3 or 4 pages. I wrote it by hand in a yellow page notebook. 188 pages later it was finished. It took me the whole college year to write, September 2005 to May 2006. I originally wanted to write this story as a graphic novel, but I don’t have the same persistence to stick with a bit of art that I do for a bit of writing. Zachery was the bad guy in this story. I liked him so much, I gave him his own trilogy. This story is book 2 of the trilogy. At the moment it is only 32,000 words, so it needs quite a bit of work.

Fiendling

Book 3. I wrote this for NaNoWriMo 2008. Like my first NaNo attempt, I got to 50,000 words and just stopped. I stopped in the middle of a sentence, no less. This book is half written, and it is terrible. It is probably the worst 50,000 words I have ever written. I imagine I’ll be tearing it to pieces and rewriting 95% of it. The good thing is that rewriting Artificer has given me loads of ideas for this book. So I’m actually enthusiastic about getting to it – after I’ve done some serious work with Familiar.

2000 and Beyond (Before?)

I’ve also been working on a thief/magic adventure since I was about 12. I’d written about 10,000 words when I lost the file and had to start again. I did start again, and wrote 4,000 new, better words. I imagine I’ll be rewriting the whole thing again, though. I actually think it needs a whole new re-imagining. It think it’s a bit too straight-forward as it is at the moment. I’ve come to be wary of ‘quest-type’ fantasies (it’s easy to fall into clichés with them), and this was ‘quest’ at it’s most unimaginative.

So there you have it. My writing life all neat and summed up.

I’m not sure if there will be a post next week. I’m going away and can’t guarantee I’ll be at a computer / have the inspiration to write.

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category: thoughts, writing

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Readers Create the Story

- by ria, on Wednesday, 6th October 2010, 10:07am

As a writer, I like to think I control everything about my story. The truth is, I control very little.

As soon as someone reads my story, I have lost all control of it. Every person who reads my story will render it differently. Names will change, both of people and places. Locations will look different. Even characters’ personalities will shift considerably. I no longer control the story, the reader does.

They invent my world all over again, using my words as a template. What they see in their mind as they read my words is not the same thing that I saw in my mind as I wrote the words. Where I see the main character as determined, they might see him as egotistical. Where I pronounce words with long vowels, they use short. I can do nothing about this.

My story doesn’t exist until someone reads it. I need readers to manifest my world and my stories. This is where things get dangerous. With all of us having control over the world, some people might expect things to go a certain way. If they see a character as strong, they expect him to do heroic things. If he does not act in accordance with their picture of him, they will be disappointed. It’s my responsibility, as the progenitor of the work, to give a clear template upon which readers can create the story.

How do I do this? By writing clearly, by giving my readers time to form a picture of each character and setting before I introduce more of them; by keeping things simple, by explaining the way things work and sticking within the rules.

I want to add, for the writers out there, your view of your world is no more right or valid than that of your readers. If they see the main character as egotistical, then he is egotistical. Don’t try to tell readers they are wrong, because they are not wrong. Everyone who reads the story creates the world, and they are all right.

In the words of Umberto Eco, “The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.”

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category: thoughts

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