When You Don't Know What to Write

By



You might hear a lot of writers comment about how they have more ideas than they have time to write.  Maybe you're among them--but what if you're not?  Then what do you do?

Well, inspiration is all around us.  It's up to us to take advantage of it.  There are times when we may find it hard to write because of stress or other life situations that crowd out our creative voice.

Where can we find inspiration?  Here are 4 ways:

1) Writing prompts.  They are all over the Internet.  Just search for them.

2) Read local news.  As they say life is stranger than fiction.  You might find something really unique to work with and build on.

3) Start small.  Maybe a novel is overwhelming and stifling your creativity.  Open it up by writing flash fiction.  Search Google Images for whatever subject you have in mind.  When you find a picture that speaks to you copy it and write a little passage on it.  Here are some examples of what I've done.

4) Live.  Do something you've never done before.  Just by going outside of the norm, you may find that story idea waiting for you.

Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 31, 2013 at 10:49 PM

    Doing something you've never done before can be such an important thing. There's something about the mind set in being new at something that unlocks creativity and allows us to make interesting connections. Nice article.

    - Josh
    www.thedarkopera.com

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to make a comment.

Popular posts from this blog

When Family Doesn't Support Your Writing

By
If you can empathize with the title of this post, then you're not alone.  So many writers, myself included, can honestly say they have family members who don't support their writing.  Some may go so far as to tell you they don't even want to hear about what you're working on, what you've done, what your goals are.  That hurts. But think about it this way, in some ways is writing any different that an other life decisions your family may not agree with?  I'm sure, if you're like me, you get very defensive when it comes to your writing.  In fact, I'm not going to deny that it places an iron wedge in the relationships.  After all, if your focus in life is your writing, and they ask so what have you been up to ...what are you supposed to do lie, remain quiet, answer another way even though you're so excited about your current WIP you'd tell a stranger?  Ticking clocks are heard in the background while you decide.
Read more

A Big Decision...

By
Image
For those of you who know me, and follow me on Twitter, you may be aware that I’ve been debating whether to pursue publishing traditionally, or take the plunge and self-publish.  With all the “buzz” on the internet, and after great consideration, I have decided to go ahead and self-publish. I had asked myself, does this mean I’m giving up ?  And, the answer is irrevocably no.  Self-publishing used to carry a type of stigma that somehow labelled the work as adhering to a lower standard, but things have changed.  Authors are taking pride in their work like never before, and just because of the increasing ease to self-publishing, they’re not allowing this to affect the quality. In making my decision, I also considered the fact that just because a book is published traditionally it doesn’t mean that it will meet with success.  Many self-published books have received awards, honourable mentions, and have met with even more-than-modest sales.  In fact, there’s ...
Read more

Write What You Love

By
We've all heard the advice, write what you know.  There's been a lot of debate over this piece of advice.  Some see it as valid direction while others argue that there wouldn't be any books if we just wrote what we know.  For example, how many mystery novels are written by real-life detectives?  And, I guess that advice is null when it comes to fantasy genres, and historical fictional works.  No fairy from Neverland wrote a book, and no one from over a hundred years ago can write a book currently.   But, this doesn't mean that we can get sloppy, in fact more work is involved, and this is why writing what we love supersedes all, in my opinion.  How else would we get motivated, and stay motivated to see a novel through to the end? In fact isn't it love for what we’re writing what pushes us through to the conclusion even when we may find the interest in our book weaning, or through the rough middles?  Isn't it the love for what we're writing that f...
Read more