Alone in My Head: Questions for the Writers in the Bunch

[seraphcelene]

Somehow metafandom managed to link to my little rant and I feel utterly silly, but tickled pink! That someone thought my wrathful, ranty moment was worth commenting on is flattering, to say the least. And there it goes, that 'I want people to like me' thing rearing its ugly head.

*sigh*

I have a question for all of you and it derives from all of the writing I've been doing of late: commentaries and articles and fic, plus I'm unofficially participating in NaNoWriMo (3789 words to date).

When you write, how do you form your ideas? What's your inspiration? Actually, I think that may be too broad and insane a question, so let me re-focus; what's the most interesting, far-fetched or just plain odd and unusual source of inspiration you've experienced? Do you write because you want to write or because you have something *to* write? I assume the answer is both, but I'm just curious about some of the things that you think when an you get an Idea. It's a chicken and egg kind of question, and for that I apologize.

I'm writing original fic for NaNoWriMo and just turned in my IWRY fic to chrisleeoctaves and I still want to write something else. tkp, I know, has multiple projects running and is constantly battling the impulse to start new ones. In that light, I want to know how specific is the impulse to write new stuff when you're in the middle of writing current stuff (as you see I still haven't recovered all of my words)? Is it just a vague idea for something? Is it a fully formed idea? Is it simple? Complex? What is it? What makes you decide to dive in and write a new piece, momentarily abandoning a current project?

I can't abandon my NaNo project. I committed myself to doing it. But, I want to write another original piece. It's called The Last Beautiful Girl. The problem, however, is that I have no idea what it's about. None. I just know the title. And I think it's creepy. But that's not unusual.

Has anyone else had that happen? You know you want to write, you've got a title or a character's name or a city or a town or a cat with green eyes and no left ear ....

You know? I know you know, so tell me about it.


ETA: But to answer my own question, and I so seldom actually do that ;) , the most interesting source of inspiration (for me) was probably the poem Jabberwocky which got Yours, Eternally off and running. I was re-reading Alice in Wonderland and I came across the poem and I thought how damnably creepy it is when you really think about it. I think that Forever had showed up on repeats and the completely eerie, creepy guy and the music for Peter and the Wolf combined in my head with that poem and that was it. Except for the decision on interspersing the text with the poem, a decision I AGONIZED over for days, it was probably the easiest thing I'd written to that point. It was such a strange mosh of things that had nothing to do with anything, I still couldn't tell you how it all managed to link up. :) That's what I love about creativity and why I love questions like this. Watching people pick at their brains to see how random stuff can just implode and give you Ideas!

Comments

[gloss]

I want to answer your questions, but it's *difficult* for me to define sources of inspiration and how I prioritize.

Okay, how I prioritize projects is, actually, easy to answer: Very badly.

Do you write because you want to write or because you have something *to* write?
The latter. I frequently *want* to write, but lack material. So I freewrite, and sometimes that works, and sometimes it just ends with me staring at my notebook. But if I have something *to* write -- a sequence of scenes, a point of meta, even just an image -- I find it much easier to get into the groove.

But then the question becomes how do I get something *to* write? And that's really hard to answer. Sometimes I pose problems/challenges to myself, sometimes I just think about a character I'd like to explore more, sometimes a sexy image hits me and I need to work with it.

Does any of this make sense?

[seraphcelene]

Makes perfect sense. And it sounds like you're a seat of your pants kind of girl. Going with the gut or the strongest image/impulse? Correct me if I'm wrong. Do you frequently drop stuff in the middle of a project to do something else? If yes, how long does it take you to return to it? Do you return to it? I find that if I don't finish something within a month or so it never gets done. And what's the oddest thing that ever got your creative juices flowing?

[thawrecka]

I get my ideas from pretty much everything. Sometimes from dreams or other fiction or things people say or pictures or songs or the sound of the train late at night, etc. And sometimes they just form spontaneously in my head. Pretty much everything inspires me in one way or another. I really have no perspective on what the most interesting, far-fetched or just plain odd and unusual source of inspiration would be, so I can't really answer that. But, yeah, I get ideas from everything and I have new ideas all the time and don't end up writing the vast majority of them.

I pretty much always give in to the impulse to write new stuff when I'm in the middle of current stuff. This may explain why my writing takes so long even though my stories are so short and why I hardly ever finish anything. But I have 90bajillion stories on the go at any given time and if I have an idea I feel the need to write or a phrase or paragraph in my head I just have to get down then I write it, no matter how much else I've got going. Otherwise I'll lose it and then if I really want it later what will I do?

Sometimes the ideas are really vague - just images or a few phrases or a plot outline. Sometimes they're fully formed and I have to madly write them before they disappear. I tend to do better with the vague ideas that I have to flesh out over time, though, unless the fully formed ideas can be written in 1,000 words or less.

Has anyone else had that happen? You know you want to write, you've got a title or a character's name or a city or a town or a cat with green eyes and no left ear ....

Happens all the time. My writing notebooks (oh god I have so many) are full of bits like that, brief notes or a title or a character sketch or maybe I just have what the character is wearing or something like that.

[seraphcelene]

Gods!!! Yes. I do the same thing. Get it all down before it disappears seems to be my motto, although with the super vague stuff I write down the odds and ends and bits and pieces into a notebook (like yours I'm sure) for later perusal. Ideas that I'll get to, one day. Some of them I've returned to finish, some are still languishing.

[lettered.livejournal.com]

I never get vague ideas and I never get fully formed ideas; they're always something in between. Same for simple and complex. The idea is usually relatively simple; the execution is usually relatively complex.

For instance, I might be writing a fic, and then get an idea to do a period FF fic set in the Reeperbahn with a really trippy POV. So, I don't quite know what the story is about, but I know how to go about writing it.

Usually I don't actually abandon what I'm working on until I start to know what it's about. With that story, I was writing something else, but I kept thinking: but what would the point of a Reeperbahn story be? I just want to flex my voice abilities, don't I, I'm not really going for a meaning that relates to canon. And that's when it clicked: a period piece that directly relates to the events of canon, so it's a piece in which events play out that directly mirror canon, ok, I know what those events are, ok, I know where to start, ok I have to write it, ok I have to abandon whatever else I'm doing . . .

But the genesis of ideas happens differently every time, and inspires me to abandon different things every time. But in a general sort of way, I get a new idea and my thought process abandons the current project, until I get so far into the new idea that I know the first line or first event . . . then everything abandons and I chase after the sparkly and new.

I'm looking forward to reading your IWRY piece today; I hope you post it in your journal so people can comment!

Thanks for this interesting question.

[seraphcelene]

See, I wish I could get my brain to be a little more forthcoming about things. I've been studying on The Last Beautiful Girl thing and it's just sort of there. The only image I get is of a girl partially mummified in black leather. She's asleep, I think, but it might be something more serious like a coma. I think that she also might have beetle wings. WTF do I do with that? HELP!!! *sigh*

Does your brain just sort of unwind your ideas as you obsess on the new or do you pose certain question to yourself in order to get from point A to point writing? I know you said that the genesis is different every time, but is there any commonality at all?

[lettered.livejournal.com]

The only image I get is of a girl partially mummified in black leather. She's asleep, I think, but it might be something more serious like a coma. I think that she also might have beetle wings.

Sounds cool.

Stuff like that, I file away and use as a piece for another idea. I have an original fic I've wanted to write for ages that's about 6 different ideas cobbled together and forced to work as a whole--maybe 2 or 3 are big enough to be their own stories, but the other bits aren't, and when I smash them all together they make something much richer.

As for how ideas come. Yeah that's a difficult thing to talk about; even if I pose questions to myself I don't pose questions to myself--a thought is so different than a worded statement or question, you know?

But for a generality, I would say ideas don't "come" to me the way some people say they do. Stuff doesn't just pop up. Like with that Reeperbahn story I was talking about, I heard a song, and that inspired a thought for a story. And then yes, what happened next was pretty much the equivalent of asking myself questions. Or picking at a scab, heh. Especially with things like the Reeperbahn fic or the 5 Things NFA fic, I'm interested in *how* to write those things. With a longer thing like my WIP, I'm interested in *what's* going to happen. But it's less of a beating my brains around trying to figure it out and more like tuning in to this week's BSG--there's that "OMG what's gonna happen next?" feeling, or "how's this gonna play out?" that feels less like the actual work of coming up with an answer and more like . . . digging down and *finding* the answer.

This is really interesting. I mean it's something that I think about a lot, but is hard to describe. Anyway how about you? Are you currently asking yourself who beetle woman is, or are you waiting for it to unravel?

[seraphcelene]

Stuff like that, I file away and use as a piece for another idea. I have an original fic I've wanted to write for ages that's about 6 different ideas cobbled together and forced to
work as a whole--maybe 2 or 3 are big enough to be their own stories, but the other bits aren't, and when I smash them all together they make something much richer.

I am intrigued by the idea of 'cobbling' together ideas. I've never tried that and I like the idea of it. There is actually another OG fic that I wrote last year that I'm all thumbs about that might fit nicely with the imagery here and could become something altogether more interesting. I'm drooling with possibilities already, so Thank You for that!!

As for how ideas come. Yeah that's a difficult thing to talk about; even if I pose questions to myself I don't pose questions to myself--a thought is so different than a worded statement or question, you know?

what happened next was pretty much the equivalent of asking myself questions. Or picking at a scab, heh.

I LOVE that! And it's very apt imagery.

Especially with things like the Reeperbahn fic or the 5 Things NFA fic, I'm interested in *how* to write those things.

Those are the easier fic for me, when I'm thinking in much more technical terms, although I don't think that sounds right. For example: When in Dreams I See Her was all about writing those mermaids. What are they like? How do they behave? Angel was purely incidental. Ever After was the same, with the exception of Red, it was about re-writing canon as fairy tales that had nothing to do with happily ever after. In both cases there was a focus outside of the fic that helped me to *see* where I needed to go and, as a result, what I needed to do to get to that point.

how about you? Are you currently asking yourself who beetle woman is, or are you waiting for it to unravel?

Until your response it was a little of both. I didn't want to push her too hard for fear that she would disappear on me. I kept thinking, "who is this chick?" and then I'd try to come up with possible answers. Nothing seemed to fit when I tested the idea against what I know/feel about her. The title didn't give me any clue either. However, NOW I have places to go because, as I said earlier, now I've started to think of her in context of something else I've written. She seems to like that space, so I'll visit it with her in mind and see what I get. :)

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

I like to check things off a list. So I have a private lj entry where I list all the fics in my WIP folder and if they're in the folder at the end of the month, they're put on the WIP list. In my monthly fic roundup, I count how many WIPs I finish. Since I started doing this, I finish a lot more fics than I usually do and have cut my WIP list down by over half since March. (Of course, that doesn't stop me from starting new fics.)

[seraphcelene]

Whoa, dude! Way to be productive! Go Team!!

Have you ever had a moment where a fic was just really resistant to being completed? You're not really interested or you've lost the impetuous, etc.? What's the longest you've had a fic on the WIP list? Is there anything that you've repeatedly transferred to the list at the end of the month? What's the record?

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

The longest I've had a fic in the WIP folder was 3 years. It had problems with editing due to betas dropping it and a co-writer. I have some fics that are solely my own that are a little older than 2 years. I also know that if I'm writing a fic that's longer than about 7,000 words that it's going to take me quite a while to finish it so I give it some time to marinate and fix itself. And I can never just work on one project at a time. I would get really bored if I did NaNoWriMo because I literally couldn't work on a single novel.

When I first put together the WIP list, I did go through my fic and make a decision to delete some of the files that just didn't work anymore.

[zibbycomix.livejournal.com]

I know that I'm answering this two years late, but anyway.
My ideas come from all sorts of places. Sometimes I start with a character (one memorable occasion a character just popped into my head and I wanted to start writing his story), sometimes I start with a concept, or sometimes I get an idea from other novels, fairytales/folktales/mythology, or a dream.
But when I finally start writing what I think is a fabulous idea, what I write on paper starts to sound crappy and cliche to me very quicly. I have rarely finished anything, and what I have finished has been very short stories or fanfiction.
Yeah, so I tend to give up on an idea, and then sometime later I think that I have a new brilliant idea, and then the cycle starts over. =P