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onlymorelove · 5 years

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How do you get the inspiration to begin a story, and how do you get the motivation to complete it?

Um, apologies in advance, but this got long. Peer beneath the cut if you want.

Good morning, Nonny. :) Thank you for the ask.

How do I get the inspiration to begin a story?

My inspiration for starting any story is tangled up in the reasons why I write:

1. I write because it’s fun. I enjoy it. It rarely feels easy, but I love, love, love words, and playing with them is just plain pleasurable. The rhythms of certain sentences, a unique snippet of description, a snatch of dialogue that sounds just right… GAH. I love words and writing :)

One of the most recent fics I wrote, some words build houses in your throat, grew out of three things:

a. A poem by Nayyirah Waheed. When I decide I’m going to write, I often read somebody else’s work before I try to put down some of my own words. Reminding myself how words can look helps me.

b. A Tony Stark Bingo square for “missing scene” that I wanted to fill.

c. An anonymous prompt that requested SteveTony + confession.

Anyway, I looked at all that stuff. So when I started that story, I knew I wanted to write Avengers fanfic that related to those three things, but I had no specific plot or dialogue or destination in mind. Then I reread that poem, and because brains are funny and like to make all kinds of associations when given just a bit of input or stimulation, I started thinking about Avengers: Endgame and things Tony might have wanted or needed to confess but didn’t actually confess in the movie. I knew pretty quickly what I wanted Tony to confess to Steve, but I didn’t want to start off with that. Then Natasha popped into my head, and I started thinking about her and Tony’s relationship. I put down some words and then put down some more before I realized where it was I was trying to go. Very little of what is actually in that story was stuff I consciously thought about until I started typing.

By the time I got to writing the part with Tony and Steve, I had decided that I wanted to address, in some tiny way, the fact that Steve’s Irish, and his parents emigrated from Ireland to the U.S. Also, my DH and I talk a fair amount about how blatantly racist the Trump administration’s policies are…Anyway, stories are like icebergs: you’ve got the actual text that you see on the surface, and you’ve got all the other research, subtext, and author-brain detritus that’s submerged in the (dark) water beneath. ;)

Brains like to make associations or react to things; give a brain some input in the form of a word prompt, dialogue prompt, a photograph, song lyrics, a melody, someone else’s fic or novel, a smell, or a random fact on the back of a cereal box, and that brain will travel somewhere. Not all those journeys will take you somewhere that ends up being a good story, of course. Not all my writing can be traced to a direct trigger, of course, but prompts and triggers definitely help my brain start going somewhere if I don’t already have a specific idea I’m working toward. If you want suggestions for prompt sites, books, and so on, just let me know. Happy to share.

Asking “What if?” also helps. What if this character made one different choice? What if this character said this instead of that? What if this character lived instead of died?

2. From Maria Taylor’s “Time Lapse Lifeline,” which is a great song:

“Oh we dreamed a life

It was just like that, was just like that

And just like that, and just like that it’s done”

From the moment we take our first breaths, we are dying. None of us will make it out of this alive. I say this not to be morbid but because it’s true. In 2018, I lost my father and brother in a span of less than five months. For months afterward, I couldn’t write. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. It was a terrible feeling. But I kept trying because I start to feel itchy and grouchy if I go too long without doing it. And yes, there have been huge chunks of time when I haven’t written much at all. But experience has taught me that writing helps keep me functional and mentally healthy. Different people process life in different ways. Some people talk a lot with friends or family. Some people draw. But we all do something with the things we see and experience. For me, some of that processing is done through writing.

So I write as an act of living because I am dying, and I don’t know when my time will be up.

3. More song lyrics for you because I’m annoying like that. From The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”:

“The world is a vampire, sent to drain

…

Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage”Life is beautiful, but let’s face it, it’s also fucking hard, and while the systems we are parts of may differ depending on the country, etc., to some extent we are all rats in a cage or cogs in someone else’s machine. Oh, there are so many things we HAVE to do. The system(s) want us to sit down, shut up, go to school, work, pay taxes, sometimes raise kids, and so on.

Well, I do or have done many of those things, but I don’t want to shut up. The sheer act of writing, of creating anything, is both an act of hope and subversion.

So I write to rebel, just a little.

3. Western canon, at least, is filled with straight white men’s voices. My fic is just fic; it’s not Great Literature ™, but I’m not straight, I’m not white, and I’m not a man. Still, I want to take up space in the world, too, damn it. Writing is one way I do that.

How do I get the motivation to complete a story?

Well, I have tons of unfinished stories. Many of them I will finish, but there are a bunch that have been sitting there for years, incomplete, and will remain that way. :) The ones I’ve finished thus far I’ve finished through sheer force of will. That’s it. I made it like work: I not only want to finish this story, I have to. Also, I want to get better at writing, and the main way to get better at something is to do it over and over again. By “better,” I mean that I want to improve at writing stories that entertain myself and anyone else who happens to read them, and that also illustrate SOMETHING about what it means to be human.

(I have read more “how to write” books and articles than any sane person should read, and the main thing I’ve learned is that they keep me from actually writing.) So I tell myself that with every piece of writing I complete, I’m learning something, however small, even though every time I finish something, I’m convinced that I’ll never be able to write anything else—or at least anything else that’s “good.” The longer I go without writing, though, the harder it feels to restart, so I do my best not to stray for too long, or else I pay for it.

My personal solution? Less focus on writing “good” stories or poems and more focus on doing the work—just continuing to write—and trusting that in the process, the writing will improve, even if it’s not by much.

This video sums up what I mean, and it’s had a meaningful impact on my writing philosophy, hell on my life philosophy. Finished, not perfect.

The act of creating something, whether it’s a story or a painting, can bring up all kinds of anxiety. What works for me may not work for you, but it helps me a lot to acknowledge that I’m anxious but I’m going to keep pushing anyway. What’s my other choice? Stop writing and then later ask myself why I stopped? The years will pass and eventually I’ll be dead; why not accept the doubts and anxiety and take some risks in the meantime?I hope I haven’t overwhelmed you; I’ve tried to be honest and specific. If you want to chat some more, please send me another ask or DM me. I wish you luck with all your creative endeavors. If you want to make something, just BEGIN somewhere. Getting started is often the hardest part.

#answered asks #Anonymous #on writing

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